English 1000

Instructor Guide: Section 4, Marking and Grading

In some college classes, what matters most is the brilliance of the lecture or the quality of the assigned readings; marking and grading may be peripheral concerns. In a writing class, however, the comments students get on their work will probably be the most important form of instruction. In general, we encourage our teachers who are hard-pressed for time to simplify class preparation where necessary rather than skimp on commentary.

4-1 Ranking and Evaluating

Peter Elbow distinguishes between marking and grading papers in his well-known article, “Ranking, Evaluating, and Liking: Sorting Out Three Forms of Judgment.” Elbow separates the act of responding into two separate categories: ranking and evaluating. According to Elbow,

[Ranking is] the act of summing up one’s judgment of a performance or person into a single, holistic number or score. We rank every time we give a grade or holistic score. Ranking implies a single scale or continuum or dimension along which all performances are hung.

By evaluating I mean the act of expressing one’s judgment of a performance or person by pointing out the strengths and weaknesses of different features or dimensions. We evaluate every time we write a comment on a paper or have a conversation about its value. Evaluation implies the recognition of different criteria or dimensions—and by implication different contexts and audiences for the same performance. Evaluation requires going beyond a first response that may be nothing but a kind of ranking (“I like it” or “This is better than that”), and instead looking carefully enough at the performance or person to make distinctions between parts or features or criteria.

Thus, ranking is the simple and unambiguous act of placing a grade on a student’s paper, while evaluating is the complex action of responding and commenting on a student’s paper. Elbow’s distinction is useful because it reminds us that evaluation is a crucial part of teaching and that it must not be confused with mere ranking.

Of course, some students will confuse the two. They have been taught to view their papers in terms of the grades they receive: for many, an A indicates they have done their job proficiently, and anything less is a failure. Of course, this is not what is represented in a university grading scale. Both grades of A and of F are uncommon in our courses, with the average grade somewhere around a B-. The disappointment of students with lower-than-expected grades can pressure teachers to reduce evaluation to a mere justification of the grade. We try, of course, to resist this pressure.

Commenting well on papers takes more time, effort, and even space than is generally acknowledged. The conventional practice of writing in the margin may not provide enough room to write substantial comments on a paper. One alternative to standard marginal comments is to write a number in the margin, and write or type comments elsewhere. See the example on the following two pages.

Anonymous English 1000, Section 111 First Draft-9/8/04 Greed = Happiness??? [17j]           When most mothers and fathers think about the value of animated films, to their children, the first thing that probably comes to mind is entertainment. However, parents do not always see the entire picture. Though animated movies do provide entertainment for children, they can also teach invaluable lessons. Such is the case in Walt Disney's Aladdin, where the actions of the main characters teach youngsters that greed and dishonesty do not pave the road to happiness.  [see comment 1]           Throughout the film greed is the basis for almost all conflicts. Everyone wants what they cannot have. The beautiful Princess Jasmine for example, desires freedom. This is made [17f] evident when her father, the Sultan, tells her that she must choose a prince from a nearby land to be her husband, because the law states that she must be married by her next birthday. [17j] Disgusted by such a demand the princess replies, "If I do marry, I want it to be for love." [see comment 2] True, it is understandable for the princess to want to make her own decisions, but she is completely unaware of how many others would die for the luxuries she takes for granted. She even complains to her father, "I've never even been outside the palace walls!" Millions of people would love to bask in the sun, and be waited on hand and foot twenty-four hours a day, all within the comfort of one's own palace. One of whom is the main character, Aladdin. [good trans, though frag.]           Although he is a charming and attractive child, he is not accepted by his society because he is monetarily poor. No matter how many solid personality traits Aladdin displays, he is still

"P" for punctuation is not a particularly useful mark for students who don't know the rules for comma use. Better would be a handbook number. << Here 17j from Diana Hacker's A Pocket Manual of Style explains situations where commas should not be used.

 

Anonymous, After a very strong start, your paper ran into trouble for two reasons. First, you weren't selective enough about what details and episodes you included -- you sometimes seemed to be telling the story for its own sake rather than to prove a point. Second, you let your definition of greed broaden until it came to mean people wanting "something other than what they have"? Will children really learn from this movie the lesson that they shouldn't want what they don't have? Jasmine doesn't have adventure, wants it, gets it. Aladdin doesn't have Jasmine, wants her, gets her. It doesn't sound like desire is being discouraged. When your purpose is clear, you write well. Now I think you need to refine your purpose and your argument. Grade: 75/100 1. Very clear statement of your thesis. 2. Nice detail in this paragraph. It does seem to stretch the normal definition of greed a bit, though, doesn't it? 3. Excellent work. You give us enough of the scene to bring it back to our minds, but you avoid too much mere retelling of the story. You quote exactly and you avoid quoting Aladdin's clever but (here) irrelevant comment about "two rear ends." 4. Some readers might be put off by the mention of contemporary American alternatives that Aladdin couldn't have considered. I'm not, since we want to remember our 2-8- year-old viewer. 5. I appreciate the way you knit your points together, though I still have trouble seeing Jasmine's desires as greed in the same sense as Aladdin's. 6. This paragraph slips a notch from what precedes it. You begin to summarize the plot without paying much attention to the point you are making. And you don't explain that very sweeping last sentence. 7. Jafar isn't dishonest and deceptive? 8. The word choice obscures your point. 9. You aren't being clear. Did she know she was stealing the fruit? 10. Do we need a paragraph break? 11. You are losing the reader in unnecessary plot summary. Isn't it enough for your purposes to know that Aladdin thinks he has to be rich to get the girl? 12. At what point? You've lost me. 13. Are you getting into trouble here because you are mixing two themes that are separable: the desire for wealth and the desire to disguise one's identity Admittedly, the movie tangles these together, but if you want to focus on greed, you need to separate them. 14. The last two sentences of the paragraph may contain an idea that will help with the untangling. 15. Again, I feel you lose your focus. Is your theme power or is it greed? 16. Here you clearly begin to summarize the movie without attending closely to the lesson. In the process, you introduce yet another theme -- brains vs. brawn. 17. In the end you come back to your theme very strongly.

<< The comments rightly focus at least as much on substance as on form. The substantive comments would be impossible if the teach didn't know the "text."

4-2 Guidelines for Commenting on Student Papers

1. Praise carefully. Judicious praise may be the most powerful teaching tool available to a composition teacher, and it’s a rare paper that gives no opportunity to use it. On the other hand, over-praising a mediocre feature of the work misleads students and diminishes the value of later praise.

2. Criticize with a neutral tone. Hard-working teachers are understandably irritated by a shoddy performance. When they express that irritation in a cross or sarcastic comment, though, the result is often an escalation of discourtesy that poisons the teaching relationship. Therefore, it’s best to avoid even one exclamation point after an observation that the student has misread the source, best to avoid saying that he or she grossly misread it. “You seem to have missed Snidely’s point; see page 23” will do the business. Some comments that seem to the instructor perfectly neutral may strike students as loaded. A “huh?” in the margin can be as offensive as a “huh?” in polite conversation: Nobody huh?’s a distinguished guest in midparagraph. Even the more clinical unclear can seem slightly discourteous, especially if it is itself unclear. Better to take a few seconds to write, “Your sentence might mean either that you disagree with Snidely’s position or that you find him a repulsive human being. Can you clarify?”

3. Mark plain errors economically. The etiquette of correction is simpler in the case of plain error. A comma splice, a misspelled word, a dangling modifier: such things as these can be marked with nothing more than a proofreader’s mark or a handbook number. Explanation would waste valuable time, and the more time and space we spend on mechanical errors, the more we reinforce the student’s preconception that a composition course is essentially about good grammatical behavior.

4. Where plain error is not the issue, model in your comments the kind of probabilistic, contingent thought you expect your students to engage in. An oversimple way of describing the immature writing of some freshmen is to say that they haven’t got in the habit of using words like if, unless, although, and however. We should take every opportunity to encourage them to cross over into the world created by these words and the thinking they mark and encourage. “Stop using sexist examples” leaves dualistic students in the familiar world of right vs. wrong, though they may privately choose their own view of right and wrong over their teacher’s. Compare

Although I don’t personally disagree with the point you are making, I wonder if this is the best example to make it with. Isn’t it likely that a stranger reading this passage would conclude that you see women as inherently incapable of abstract thought? Even if this is your view, why pick an unnecessary fight with a large part of your potential audience?

5. Be alert to the semiotics of marking by hand. Comments printed by a machine in uniform lines have a detached, professional look to them. They reveal less about the mood of the writer than handwritten comments. Handwriting that suddenly gets larger may begin to look like shouting; handwriting that trails off into illegibility may suggest that the writer is bored. A heavy line slashing through a sentence can look like an angry rejection. Such opportunities for expression can be used artfully, but when they are not, some students are so dismayed by the form of the comment that they have trouble attending to the substance. Generally, it’s best either to type comments or to write them in a uniform, careful hand.

6. Keep your own errors down to a level consistent with your status as an authority on correctness. Some would go so far as to say that all comments should be edited to the level of polish we expect A students to achieve on their final drafts. Such a position overstates the case. To edit your comments so carefully that there is never a dropped word or a dropped ending would subtract valuable time and therefore valuable commentary. Nonetheless, wretchedly composed comments with error that could be called illiterate obviously damage a teacher’s credibility. If you know (as many excellent writers do know) that your spontaneous sentences are riddled with errors, allow some time for correction and use a word processor that checks spelling and grammar if possible.

4-3 Grades in Context

Everyone has heard the stories about the composition class where the students never went to class, except to watch movies, and all received A’s at the end of the semester. At the opposite end of the spectrum is the instructor who is intractable: Nobody will receive better than a C in this course, and most will receive D’s or F’s. As much as we would like to relegate such stories to the category of student mythology and folklore, they have some basis. In a recent semester, we had one section of English 1000 with GPA of 4.0 (all A’s) and another with a GPA of 1.9 (C minus). Nonetheless, the majority of sections have averages between 2.5 and 2.8.

These numbers seem to indicate that students with average ability and responsible work habits should be capable of earning a B- on their second-submission papers in English 1000 (first submissions are typically a half-grade lower). This is not to say that all students will improve their papers, or that B- should be the par grade on second submissions; it only implies that the average student should be capable of B- work. Averages between 2.2 and 3.2 (within half of a letter grade of 2.7) are considered normal. Courses with grade point averages either higher than 3.2 or lower than 2.2 raise obvious questions: Are the students markedly stronger or weaker than average, or does the variation come from the teacher’s having standards different from the program’s?

Some instructors have reputations for grading high as a way of buying good will from their students. This practice certainly doesn't buy popularity with colleagues or with the composition office The teacher who decides to give out cheap A's undercuts the work of those who are grading responsibly and adds to students' perception that there are no rational standards by which writing can be evaluated. "It's just a matter of who you get," as they say. Please don't make the job of your fellow teachers harder by making your course into a grade giveaway.

4-4 Some Practices that Regularly Produce Grade Protests

1. Standards that change over the course of the semester. Students who receive high grades at the beginning of the semester from instructors who want to be encouraging and then low grades at the end of the semester when their instructors decide to clamp down are understandably confused and irritated.

2. Belated Grading. When instructors refuse to assign a grade until the semester nears its end (perhaps on the theory that such a system gives students full credit for improvement), some students feel betrayed by a sudden low evaluation. Even a B may seem low to a student who feels that his or her work has been enthusiastically received for several weeks before the B appeared.

3. Group projects that are assigned one grade. Valuable as group writing projects are as learning experiences, they obviously punish the strongest member for the weaknesses of the others. If the shared grade on a group project weighs heavily in the semester grade, this punishment may be particularly grating. And if the project falls late in the semester, the group’s “pulling down” of a strong performance may be glaringly obvious. (Imagine yourself as a student who has earned A’s on everything but a group project who ends up with a C in the course because a couple of classmates didn’t pull their weight in the last two weeks.)

4. Allowing the assumption of the default A to go uncorrected. Some students leave high school believing that a student who does all the work in an English class and behaves well will receive an A. If they don’t get an A, there must, they think, be an explanation. Much misunderstanding could be avoided if these students realized from the outset that good manners won’t earn an A in English 1000, that only a performance well above the “average” or “acceptable” level will do that.

5. Subtracting points for bad behavior. A student who earns a B, let’s say, for the written work in class, and then discovers that the final course grade is a C because of absences, or tardiness, or vaguely defined “discussion” grading may have a sound basis for a complaint. This is not to say that points can’t be subtracted for failure to submit drafts or research logs or failure to participate in peer reviews. These are writing activities. But subtraction for generally poor attitude or participation is another matter. Students can, of course, be dropped for absences, and this is probably a more sensible course than lowering the semester grade. As a rule of thumb, we recommend that at least ninety percent of the points for the semester be assigned for writing that is graded on its quality.