Grading Writing

[robinturner]

Note: This post will only be of interest to people in academia and will probably bore my normal readers. So if you are normal, don't read this. Really. Go and follow me on Twitter or something.

Ever since I started grading essays (and that was a looong time ago, boys and girls), I had assumed, along with most of my colleagues, that if you were going to break down the way you gave grades, rather than just holding the paper up to the light and saying "Hmmm, looks like a B+," it would be along the following lines:

1. Argument;
2. Organisation;
3. Language;
4. Other stuff.

"Argument" (or "Content" if you want to be more vague) is what you are left with if you remove all the citations, jumble up the sentences and translate the result into Chinese. Or at least it's what you'd get if you were very patient and good at reading Chinese. "Organisation" is presumably what you'd get if you were to replace all the words with abstract symbols. "Language" is mercifully straightforward: academics can argue for hours about what constitutes good grammar or style, but at least there is no doubt that grammar and style are what we are grading here. "Other stuff" could be quotation, citation, punctuation (which some people think isn't part of language), fonts or whatever you want, and it often gets tagged awkwardly onto one of the other three to give us hybrid criteria like "Argument and Use of Sources" or "Language and Citation". In fact, until today, I'd thought the main problem was just where to stick the "other stuff".

What I was ignoring was that argument and organisation are pretty much inseparable. You can separate them in theory, as I demonstrated above, but in practice they usually go together, or at least they do in ENG 101. I occasionally give a paper "D" for argument and "A" for organisation, but that's nearly always because the paper is off-topic or factually inaccurate; I hardly ever do the reverse, because a paper which is disorganised is not well-argued. Another problem with dealing with organisation on its own is that you end up doling out a lot of average-to-high grades because it is easy for students, once they've learnt the basics, to do cookie-cutter organisation. They know what teachers want, and it's easy to provide it. Thesis statement? Check. Some crap to lead into the thesis statement? Check. Paragraphs with one main idea? Check. Topic sentences? Check. This method might not get you an "A" for organisation, but it will guarantee you a "B". So when there is a discrepancy between the grades for argument and organisation, it is often because the student is simply writing to a formula.

It seems, then, that it is best to treat argument and organisation as one entity for the purposes of grading. This leaves us with language, which is worth a band to itself, and "other stuff", some of which could go in with language (e.g. punctuation) and most of which is to do with using sources, so we could have the following:

1. Argument / Organisation;
2. Use of Sources / Citation;
3. Language.

Looks simple enough to me.

Comments

[miss-next.livejournal.com]

I'm not normal, but I'm now following you on Twitter anyway. :-D

[miss-next.livejournal.com]

Your follow request has come through by e-mail, but isn't yet showing on Twitter itself. I'm about to go out, so if it still isn't showing by the time I get back I'll let you know.

[solri.livejournal.com]

I'm seeing your tweets now.

[fionnghuala.livejournal.com]

How about demonstrating knowledge of whatever was on the syllabus? I'm a social scientist, so that ends up being one of the top things I grade on.

This leaves me puzzled by something I occasionally get - an essay which answers the question in a somewhat interesting way, but includes no material at all from the course.

[solri.livejournal.com]

That would normally be the primary consideration, but I'm talking about English & Composition 101 here, so whatever content is covered in the texts in the course, the bulk of the real syllabus is about how to write an essay. Even so, one item I added from our standard department criteria to my own assignment criteria was "is factually accurate."

[osymandus.livejournal.com]

And what if the student is Dyslexic/Dyspraxic/apracxic .
We're scuppered on Language and Organistaion (in the normal sense)

[solri.livejournal.com]

When it comes to writing, dyslexia isn't such a problem now most work is word-processed and hence can be spell-checked (though I still frequently have to write "Use the spell-checker!" in essay feedback). Of course, it's still going to be a problem in reading, but for my students, coping with weird English spelling is enough of a problem that dyslexia, unless it was so severe as to prevent them studying at all, pales into insignificance. Dyspraxia, on the other hand, is a problem for anything.

[osymandus.livejournal.com]

dyslexia isn't such a problem now most work is word-processed and hence can be spell-checked (though I still frequently have to write "Use the spell-checker!" in essay feedback).

Ah see you say that , however two things i have issue with 1) you can replace words with another my personal favourite is normally form and from , which are spelled correct 2) You can simply forget .

I was diagnosed last year with Dyslexia and partially Dyspraxia ( i have v poor short term/working memory ), so i have my coping mechanisms in place. However another part of my issue is not being able to proof read (yet annoyingly i have extremely high reading comprehension (i.e my brian dosnt care about the words or grammer really it already knows the meaning of what your writing), and having just been reading some books on both subjects written for teachers and teaching (theres very few for the Adult Dyslexic day to day life) , its not so much teh students at fault but the methods they are given to express themselves . Too much ephasis is not given to weather you can read or understand what has been writen but if the rules have been followed

My own personal case back in Secondary school (a mere 20 years ago now ) i could churn out history papers very well and was only not a constant A student due to hand writing .dyslexia isn't such a problem now most work is word-processed and hence can be spell-checked (though I still frequently have to write "Use the spell-checker!" in essay feedback).

[solri.livejournal.com]

I mix "form" and "from" frequently, not to mention the classic "their" and "they're".

The other problem with spell-checkers is that they can come up with the wrong word themselves. I think I mentioned the essays I received about Plateau's Republic and the political philosopher, Thomas Hobbies. An even weirder case I just saw was "ağabeylities". After pondering for a while, I realised that the student had written "abilities" but her Turkish word processor must have been set to auto-correct "abi" to "ağabey". Both words mean "big brother": the former is the colloquial spelling, the latter is the etymologically correct though phonemically wrong formal spelling. (Actually, the informal spelling is also not a correct reflection of the pronunciation - I reckon it should be something like "ağbi".)

[osymandus.livejournal.com]

Lol , yeah its a common one i should have used my other favourite of then and now (i once wanted to write door and wrote maybe)

Did Hobbies have his small toddler/scientist friend Calvin with him ?

[niveau.livejournal.com]

Sure, I'll bite. I'm now following you on Twitter.

As regards essays, I'm all about the argument -- but often the failure to have one of those is due to the choice of words (language use) and/or the interpretation of sources (copy-paste being substituted in place of interpretation in the essay context). I've got a fresh steaming pile of tiny undergrad essays waiting for me, and I know that this is what my mandate will largely be. Thanks for the insights.

Not an academic

[sjcarpediem.livejournal.com]

Use of sources/citation and language are difficult to order, I think--often language denotes what is a citation and what is not (if we're including punctuation in language, then even more so)...

Re: Not an academic

[solri.livejournal.com]

There's also a blur between language and organisation (discourse markers).

Re: Not an academic

[sjcarpediem.livejournal.com]

Indeed.

Why not just have two criteria?

1. Stuff that should be in a paper
   • In rational sequence
   • In irrational sequence
2. Stuff that shouldn't be in a paper

The criteria and sub-criteria can vye (sp? lack of En processing....) against one another. Make it all BINARY!

Re: Not an academic

[solri.livejournal.com]

There's something to be said for that, given that it's the way we react when reading papers.

Re: Not an academic

[sjcarpediem.livejournal.com]

Because also, I find that I grade (and have been graded) based as much on a deficiency in argument, language, or use of sources as I do (and have been) graded on the quality of what is present in the paper, if not more so!

[kamimutan.livejournal.com]

sounds like a coherence/cohesion problem....
Argument/Organisation

According to what I've been studying, most linguists theorize that they are not to be separated...
Pretty much what you found.

[solri.livejournal.com]

Indeed. Coherence and cohesion are the kind of "minimal pair" applied linguists are fond of.

[kamimutan.livejournal.com]

:)
Are you a linguist?

[solri.livejournal.com]

Only in a very minor way - I only have one published paper on linguistics per se.