This week I would like you to write about your experience with either (a) the grading process or (b) the peer review process. If you have not taught composition before, you may write about this experience from your perspective as a student. Here are some questions to get you thinking (you do NOT have to answer all of these questions):
(a)
-What is most difficult for you about grading student essays?
-How much time does it take for you to grade a class set of essays and what have you done that has worked for you in order to reduce the workload/time?
-What type of rubric works best for you? Why?
-How do you explain grading criterea to students?
-What do you do when students contest a grade?
-What advice would you give to novice teachers about grading?
(b)
-What makes a successful peer review session?
-Do students find peer review helpful? Why or why not?
-What can you do to help students give better peer feedback?
-Do you do peer review in groups or pairs? What works the best for you?
-What advice would you give to novice teachers about peer review?
Stephanie Sanchez
Well, this is my first semester teaching a composition course. The course I am teaching is English 3201 which is a basic composition class. In this course I need to consider that there are other things, such as grammar, that I also need to cover in order for them to improve their writing. The grammar problems are what I taught would make grading their essays hard. But I developed, in a sense, a grading strategy that I think is helping me.
First, a custom make the rubrics I will use for grading their papers. I explain these to them and answer any questions about it. Second, I discuss this when we start writing the essay so they have in mind, before hand what is expected of them in that particular essay. Third, I also work with them in class on those things they are going to be evaluated on. For example: if in the rubric I am going to give points for a good introduction, I work with them in class their introduction. Also, I am giving points for grammar in their essay, but it is not clear cut in the sense for example; 10 grammar errors equal minus 5 points. I do it in a more general sense. For example; many errors, some errors and such. In the comment area I will write exactly why I took points of for, but grammar is not the focus of the evaluation, content is. What I am also doing with the grammar is taking 5 minutes in class to discussed grammar issues that arise from their essays and written work. This way I am actually teaching what they need, not so much what the course requires, but at the end I am reinforcing their grammar skills.
Another way of helping them in their writing, before they hand in their essay for grading, is that they are doing in class peer reviews. For their first and second drafts they had to get the review of two people. After doing each set of review they had to compare the peer reviews they got. This activity was done so that they could analyze if different people could get the same message out of the same essay. If the reviews were all totally different they know that something was wrong and they had to work on it. For example: if in the first draft their peers where asked to identify the thesis statement of the essay and each peer identified a different sentence as the thesis this meant that their thesis was not clear, so they had to re-work it.
I found that this really worked with my students because they could see, from a peer’s perspective that they had to work a little bit more on their essay. It is different when we tell them to write it again because they may think we, as teachers, send them to write it again just for the sake of it. So, in other words the critique is taken differently when it comes from a peer.
Now, this does not mean that I did not give them feed back, on the contrary. While they did their second peer review the way stated above I called them one by one to read their essay. I was clear that I could not correct the grammar because it would take to long and that would not be the main focus of the final evaluation. I just made sure they had a clear thesis statement, topic sentences in each paragraph, that the paragraphs where overall coherent and logical and in general that the essay is easy to read and understand. Now, if the essay contained too many grammar errors that made it impossible to read I would tell the students to visit the writing center, or to see me during my office ours. In my office I would tell him or her, briefly what he or she needed to work abut their grammar or I would discuss it in the next class in the five minutes of grammar discussion.
In conclusion, I am starting out as a TA so I think that the way I do things will change semester by semester because my students will be different and definitely I will be different. But for now what I am currently doing is working just fine.
Well, during this semester, I did a peer review for essay #1. The peer review consisted of three parts. The first was concerning the Writing Process in general, the second concerning the content and sentence structure, ambiguities, generalizations, etc., and the third the MLA format. Since it was the first time my students did this kind of activity, I first gave a short lecture on what is a Peer Review and which were the things they were expected to achieve with this activity. I pointed out things such as having an open mind to other opinions, accepting constructive criticism, being honest, discussing corrections, not just writing them on the draft, among others. Then, I gave them a handout which guided them through the entire process of correcting all three aspects, and gave them a guide question for each of the aspects that I wanted them to evaluate in their partner’s paper. I had them in pairs because the guidelines for the peer review were extensive and it required the person to focus all 50 minutes of class on only one paper.
The first thing they had to do was read their essay to their classmate aloud. This made them notice their grammatical mistakes and ambiguities right off the bat. Then, I had them exchange papers and read silently once more. Since they always want to correct grammar (because this is the only thing they believe they have to correct), I had them do that first. Then, I asked them to look for a thesis, a topic sentence in each paragraphs, a clear introduction and a clear and closured conclusion, and the basic information found in each of these paragraphs. I had them put a question mark in things that they did not understand and a @ sign in things they though of as confusing. And it goes on from there to evaluate all the other aspects. I must say that students responded to this better than I thought they would, honestly! They got into a “teacher mode” and they were very objective and assertive in identifying each of the aspects. Also, now that I am in the process of correcting, I notice how their drafts change once they were reviewed. I asked them about the process afterwards and they all agreed on that the guideline questions were the ones which helped them because they had not done a peer review before, so they would have been completely lost. I personally consider that the previous short lecture was an important factor as well.
This also makes grading a lot easier because you have your students correct those first and general things that usually students tend to either forget or have trouble doing, while they learn to identify them and correct them in other people’s works. It also creates and awareness of their own work and the things they need to improve. I also believe it is fare because they know exactly the things they are going to be evaluated on for their final grade of this essay. Still, I found this entire chapter very useful (Yes, I read it all and then came here and saw that I didn’t have to… but that’s good though!), and the strategies and guide questions that you can use to trigger student’s responses very useful and will put a few of them to use.
I am currently teaching 3103 for the second time so I am dealing mostly with the writing process. Last week students worken in their drafts in the classroom for the 1st half hour, after that they read eachother’s papers and I asked them to critique it and try and finf the theisis statement. What I find most difficult in an activity like this is keeping them focused on what they’re actually supposed to be doinf because most of them just start chatting of other things or finish quickly and find thenselves just sitting there. Some students didnt bring their drafts so they had no actual paper to work on. When it comes to grading, I use a specifuc rubric depending on the type of essay. Last semester I used one same rubric for all essays regardless of their nature. I found this to be a bad idea since If I choose a specific rubric for a specific essay that there is less doubt about what they are suposed to be doing and what should and should not form part of the essay. What I do is that I make a copy of the rubric for the students beforehand, we discuss it in class and they get to keep it in order to use it as a guide in their writing so that there will no surprises when grading time comes along. The most difficult part of grading, I would have to say would be mantaining consistency throughout all essays. I find that sometimes I take points off here that I didnt take there, that kind of thing. Also, sometimes it is hard to avoid being biased by student’s writing. Some students make the same mistake over and over and when reading this student’s essay you find yourself searching for that mistake instead of believeing that this time he/she will do better. Thank God I only have one section this semester because It takes me at least 2 hours to correct each section. Their essay some times need so much help that I dont even know where to start.
With grading the papers that my students hand in there is no clear way or correct way to go about with the grading of their work. This proves at times to be very unsettling and as well very troublesome. Some of the students write clearly and concisely but they lack in their ability to use correct grammar or punctuation and therefore might damage the clarity of their work. But the grading goes as stated if they develop a clear thesis, follow through with their ideas and developed them throughout the paper and ended with a good conclusion then their grade is a positive one. Sometimes students do not follow in with what is being taught to them and right then and there is when the process gets difficult for grading. Their ideas are not strongly developed and they are not in the format that was asked of them to follow then the grade is a bad one even though they have a clear idea of what they want to talk about in their papers but they keep bringing new ideas into the cutting board then there is a problem that they extend their word limit and will write a sloppy conclusion based on these points that have not been developed or even related to the topic at hand.
The students are usually graded with the use of a rubric with a set criteria ranging from development of ideas, paragraph cohesion and coherence to the main topic of the essay and as well use of vocabulary and sentence clarity. They are graded in a 100-point scale from excellent to bad or poorly written. The type of grading sequence that they are going to be graded in is mostly based depending on the aforementioned criteria that is presented within the rubric as well as what has been discussed in classed concerning the writing process and the development of the essay have clear ideas follow in with the ideas and then follow through in developing the essay using their own creativity. In using a rubric I feel that the evaluating process for their written work is clearly seen as to what am I looking for specifically in their papers based on what I have taught the students in their writing process. With the rubric the students can go over their papers and see if they missed something that was discussed in the beginning of the course regarding their paper construction.
The rubric as well can be a testament to use when a student allegedly feels that he/she did not receive the grade that was given to them for example the student missed the cohesion and coherence in the body paragraphs regarding to the main idea of the paper or the thesis statement of the work as a whole. The parts are corrected and pointed out in their first drafts of where the student needs to fix or elaborated in the paragraphs and is repeated again in the rubric for them to make notice of when they handed the final draft and so they can go over the paper and fix the necessary areas. If the student for some reason has a space to debate the topic or the essay then the area where they failed was noted and there is no reason for them to make a claim because the area was signaled and made aware to the students if they did not followed instructions or anything else, the rubric is a testament for the criteria that I am looking for in their essays.
When correcting essays the time it usually takes me to read over and make corrections depends on the work load that I have for my classes for it usually takes me 2 days to correct my two sections of 3103 but I prefer them to give me a full two weeks for me to do it thoroughly because I might or not have work for my classes and I don’t want to get behind on those. The thing I do is that I set the hand in for the essay on a Friday so I have them on the weekend so I could read through it with emphasis and comprehensively and it has helped me to reduce my work load effectively.
A memory I have of my first composition course, is of one while I was still in high school. My advanced English teacher really helped us improve our writing. He explained to us step by step the writing process and showed us examples of everything he was teaching us. We also had to do peer reviews for every essay we had to turn in and it was very helpful. Also at the same time we were reading examples we had the time to write and practice, which in the end it was very useful for us.
When teaching or taking a composition course, this should be a process in which both, student and teacher can participate and exchange knowledge and ideas. It should not be a burden for a student to make a composition and it should not be a burden for a professor having to sit down one day and read and correct at least 60 essays. Of course not everyone thinks and reacts the same way and that is why we need to communicate. Reading and grading compositions is very time consuming that is why we need to take into consideration our goals when grading them. Another thing is that if in the reviewing process, the students and professor are not on the same page in terms of what both of them want of that composition it is going to make the process a long and difficult one.
A memory I have of my first composition course, is of one while I was still in high school. My advanced English teacher really helped us improve our writing. He explained to us step by step the writing process and showed us examples of everything he was teaching us. We also had to do peer reviews for every essay we had to turn in and it was very helpful. Also at the same time we were reading examples we had the time to write and practice, which in the end it was very useful for us.
I think the last time I took a composition course here at Colegio was when I was a freshman, and the memories I have of that course are not pleasant at all. First of all the professor that had was very boring and he did not encourage us to have a reason to write anything. Every time we had to make an essay, he would just choose the most boring themes which nobody was interested in. It was very difficult for me to write my compositions because when we had time to do peer reviews, my classmates either did not wanted to do anything because “I already wrote my essay and I’m not going to re write it” or they would just write superficial comments and not read the composition at all. Also the only thing the professor did was to correct our grammar mistakes but not write any types of comments regarding content. When we got our compositions back, I felt as if he just were trying to justify the grade than to help us improve our writings. I used what I learned in high school to write my compositions in this course because honestly it was a nightmare just to be in that classroom.
I assume students who have difficulty with the writing process must receive an appropriate feedback. So, they try again and learn from back experiences. The process of grading is accompanied by student’s performance in a paper.
the professor receive an interpretation by cross-disciplinary strategies such as thesis, organization or grammar.
The combination of these rules must give the professor a concise idea to use an appropriate rubric. Planning this action the professor must ask or motivate for a required skills to improve.
For me grading is a system of options the students have depending of the category of a paper. The professor must develop a personal criteria, I can guess when revising a paper at the end the professor must turn a special time to write a special comment. I consider this system of grading has advantages, because it motivates the students with low grades. This system encourages revision what is important for a writer to be in progress.
The time for a peer revision, is essential, due to the student becomes more knowledgeable to correct mechanical errors, therefore students are educated in how to revise, peer’s moment its a moment to discuss the importance of writing, or give the solutions to concerns. Every single problem in writing must be identified by the student, the role of the revision for the professor is to identify major problems.
The evaluator must find the opportunity to talk to their students, because the composition is that process, student becomes in a better writer and it allows the professor improve in a procedure to satisfy everyone.
I involve in the role of student when she he receives a wrong essay. I would like to educate feel them more free to revise and motivate them to improve themselves. This activity must not be punishable, I know at the beginning the students write “nightmares”. To check the revision can be an argumentative strategy to grade helpful. Sincerely The weakness for the professor is the time of each revision, in contrast the motivation is when the final draft satisfies the professor’s view. Even the student always is persistence to achieve a better grade, to satisfy that complain related to the time is when there is a positive reaction from both.
I teach 7th grader students and I give more emphasis on the reading area than the writing area. So I do not have the experience of grading essays. However, even though in my English class I don’t give essays or long compositions, I do give writing activities such as short poems, letters, journals or personal opinions. For these activities, I used rubrics. These rubrics do not emphasize on the content, but rather on creativity, to hand in on time, and follow instructions. I do not like to emphasize much on grammar because I know that this part is the most frustrating for them. So basically, what I do with the grammar part is that, I help the students with words that they don’t now or I suggest them other words that could work on their assignment. On this part, I spent days reviewing their work.
I think peer reviewing is an excellent idea because it gives the students the opportunity to discuss suggestions and opinions with someone beside the teacher. Many students feel comfortable by receiving and giving advice to students that are going on the same process and at the same time it is less intimidating. When I took a composition class, long time ago, the peer review was very helpful. The dynamics with the students were very successful and neither of us felt the pressure of the assignment.
One comment about the rubrics that the professor gave us as examples is the word “poor”. I think that will sound better the word “needs improvement”, “needs more work”.
I am not a TA so I don’t have many experiences. Last semester I was doing my practice with the level that I never wanted a ninth grade. I didn’t teach writing because the teacher didn’t make them write or read on their own. But there was one assignment where they did had to write and do a presentation. What I do remember was this group of three students, one girl and two boys, that when the time to present came to present they flipped. The girl said that she had done the entire written project on her won and then, on of the boy said out loud that the girl had paid someone to do the project. For me this was a shock and the problem was that I had nothing else to let me know if that was true or not. Then because the girl said that she had done the written part she did not present any of the material. She only introduced herself, the group and the topic of the presentation. I had two separate rubrics to grade them, I had the presentation rubric and the written part I graded it with another rubric. The rubrics where very similar, it looked like this:
5 – It was written in a cohesive and clear way with no grammatical errors
4- It was written in a cohesive and clear way but it has one error
3- It has a little problem with cohesion and it is not to clear and it has from two to three errors
2- There are difficult parts to understand and it has more than five errors
1- It is hard to understand and it has many grammatical errors.
The only this was that the points were a little more strict than these that I have written. I can’t remember which of the two rubrics I didn’t like because immediately I read it I knew that the rubric was design for Native English speakers. The teacher had got it from internet and I believe that it didn’t serve the needs of the students. Independently of this I liked it because the points will be given depending on what they had done. The instructions were given to them, if they followed the instructions they would get a good grade. Also if they had any questions concerning their grades I had my evidence and could have taken out the rubric and said to them, well you didn’t have this and this was the points you got for a part of the project. I really like this type of rubric because if you know how to design it, fulfilling the needs of your students it will make your correction work easier and it will help the students as well. Students are lazy and if we do a very strict rubric we will not help them out. If we do a loose rubric we won’t help them either because if they do a sloppy job and get a good grade then they won’t put effort in the assigments or won’t improve. I believe that if we know how much can our students produce, then we can make a better rubric.
I have not taught composition course therefore I don’t know about the grading process of an essay but I have taken many composition classes during my undergraduate period. In most of the composition courses that I took the great majority of the students were not from the English department therefore the feedback that I received most of the time was not very good. I believe that proficiency levels in a writing course is a mayor issue that the professor should be aware of when they are making peer review groups. Most of the professors decide to place students that have a lower proficiency level with others that have a higher knowledge on composition in order to help the ones that are in disadvantage. In overall this is a very good idea but it does not help the student that is in an advanced stage. There are other professors that let the students choose their own peer review group and I believe that this is the most effective method. This method not only helps the students but also the professors because they can take off their backs the pressure of selecting the ideal partner for their students needs. I believe that in order to have a successful peer review session the students must be restricted to only give feedback on the form or ideas expressed on an essay. They should not interfere in grammatical mistakes or syntax misplacements. As writers we know that you can play with syntax in order to express an idea and that they are many ways to write the same idea. Many times students interfere in the way that their peers express their ideas and they change their sentence structure only because they can believe that they can generate a better sentence. I believe that in order to help our students make the most out of their peer review session we should provide them with a rubric. The rubric will help them look for the important parts in the essay and be objective in their review. So instead of just saying that they like or they don’t like their partner’s essay, they can give an objective opinion based on facts. Usually when I participated in a peer review activity it was in groups of three. The professor believed that it would be more objective to have two opinions about your essay from different people, this way you could identify which corrections were repeated. I also believe that assigning points for peer reviews is very important because you force your students to really look at their partner’s works. When I say grading I do not mean that you give a certain amount of points to the students that have their papers signed by a peer but that you actually grade the form of evaluation that they have in their essays. By doing this the students will be highly demanding in the comments that they receive from their peer because they will know that it will be part of their grade. This will promote a further connection between the reviewer and the writer because they will know that they are working cooperatively.
Peer review is extremely important for students in writing courses. This activity allows them to develop critical thinking. As I see it, if students are able to give good feeback to other classmates, then they should be able to criticize their own work. However doing peer review is not such an easy activity. First of all, once students are placed into groups, they forget about the teacher. It is easy for them to forget about the purpose of the activity and to begin a conversation about anything else. Another aspect that teachers have to be aware of is that many students do not know how to do peer review. Thus, they migh read an essay and just write “good job” or “it looks nice.” That is not the type of feedback that should be given to the student who wrote the essay. That is why for me there are three essential things that the teacher has to do when the students are asked to do peer review.
The first thing is to make sure that the instructions are given before they are divided into groups, otherwise thye will begin to talk and read and they will not do the process properly because they did not pay attention. The second step is to take time to explain what peer reviewing is and how to do it appropiatedly. After this is done you should also provide them with some guidelines that they can use as they are giving the feedback. Sometimes giving them an actual sheet with questions to answer about the essay is a good idea; it keeps them concentrated on their task. Finally, students need to be supervised. Even after the instructions have been given and the guidelines have been provided, the teacher should walk around to verify if there are any doubts among the student and also to make sure that the job is getting done.
I like to have my students work in pairs because that way they exchange their drafts and can have a more personal feedback session. You also have to know your students in order to decide what is the best option for them. In my case, this semester, the moe students have in agrouo, the less productive it will be. That is anotehr reason why I have decided to do the peer review in pairs.
When I grade my students’ papers it takes me about three days for each group. At first I thought it would not take me that long since they had to write two drafts before the final one. However, I like to look at every detail and look at the drafts they had turned in before in order for me to be aware about what changed in their papers and what didn’t. Before it was very tiring and at some point I got annoyed by the whole process, but what I have done lately is read all the essays out loud to speed up the process. Every time I make a pause because something doesn’t seem right or clear in the essay, I make sure I comment on how to improve or what would have worked better in that particular part of the essay. I usually try to make specific comments for them to improve in their writing, even if it is the final draft, in the margins of each page, but at the end, when I use a rubric to grade their paper I try to make more comments, just so they won’t forget.
The rubric I use when grading my students’ papers is the same for all essays. I could say it is a standard ESL Composition Rubric. When I evaluate my students’ papers using this rubric I look at the content, organization, vocabulary, language use and mechanics. When it comes to the content, it is very important to look at the thesis statement and whether the details in the essay are relevant to the topic assigned or not. The amount of details that are relevant to support their thesis is very important as well. When it comes to the organization of the essay, I look for the ideas to be clearly stated, that their essay follows a logical order and that the material used to support their main idea is organized properly, since this could affect the outcome of their grade and also the understanding other people have of their writing.
In the vocabulary area, I try to look at their choice of words and whether they tried to experiment with new vocabulary that is also appropriate for the audience they are writing to or if they repeat the same words over and over again. It is good for them to realize that using the same concepts one time after another seems monotonous and some readers may even lose interest or may become frustrated. I know I do. On the other hand, language use refers to the way they construct their sentences, both complex and simple. Mechanics will be the last area evaluated and it is worth only five points since it refers to areas such as punctuation, spelling, capitalization and paragraphing. It is still an important area to work on in an essay but many times it doesn’t change much of the meaning they are trying to get across.
I decided to use this rubric and this method of grading because it saves me a lot of time that I could spend preparing their next classes and it has helped me when I give them feedback. Once I give them their grade, I tell them if they have any questions they can come and talk to me after class or during my office hours, since I believe that is a private matter that shouldn’t be exposed in public. At the same time I can take time explaining to them personally why they received that grade and what I believe they need to improve.
I actually just started my first experience with grading essays over the weekend. I have been putting if off for a week now, because I knew it was not going to be easy.
Some questions I have encountered:
Am I grading them based on their capabilities, or am I “grading on a curve’ and grading their paper based on others in the class? How can I make sure I am grading objectively?
Do I give someone a perfect score? Or is that suggesting that everything is perfect with their paper, and nothing can be improved (which is seldom the case)? Sometimes I get carried away when I see they have done something really well.
At first, I thought that in order for me to be the most objective, I would not look at the name of the person who wrote the essay. Ultimately, I wasn’t comfortable doing this, so I didn’t.
Another reason I’m having a hard time grading essays is because I don’t want to discourage them by giving them a bad grade. They are required to take the class, and not many of them are actually interested in writing. I would like to make them feel like they have the potential to be a writer in some way. One solution I was thinking about would be to perhaps grade their essays, and note 1 or 2 suggestions that would make their essay stronger. If they implement these changes in order to improve the overall paper, I will re-grade it.
I have found it very beneficial to grade with a rubric. Not only will it help the students have a better understanding of their grade, but it is good for me to reference when I am grading the papers, so I can remember the criteria I told them I would be grading on. In the future, I also plan on giving them a copy of the rubric when I first assign the essay, so they have something to follow when they are writing.
Generally, for my 3201 class, I have found the Introductions and Conclusions have exceeded my expectations. However, the body and overall construction of paragraphs yields some confusion. Definitely this is something that can be worked on in class, but I thought it was interesting that they grasped the criteria that makes a “strong” introduction, but have problems in simply expressing and separating their ideas.
As far as peer reviews go, I think they benefited the most when they did a self-review. Many of them could tell what parts of their papers were strong and what parts needed work (getting them to implement those necessary changes is another story). I imagine they do not have experience with peer reviews, because I can tell they aren’t comfortable giving criticism to each other. Almost no one wrote a suggestion for making their peer’s essay better – they all said it was “perfect”. With that being said, I would like to emphasize the drafting process more for the next essay. Another idea I had for the next essay was for them to actually write the first draft IN CLASS — this way I can see where they started from (without using outside resources –babelfish, internet in general) and what their final one looks like.
Lidsay X. Centeno
Response #3
I have a total of 115 students (give or take o few). Assigning essays is not an easy task. Many students do not know what an essay is and a teacher has to start from square one. The students get scared pretty easily when they listen to the word “essay” and they quickly jump to the conclusion that it must be a 10 page report. Us teachers must drive them away from that notion and let them see that an essay is not as complicated as they visualize it and although many teachers criticize the five paragraph essay, to a teacher there is no better start but here because this way students get the hang of things and slowly learn things they should and shouldn’t do while writing.
To read each an every one of the essays seems quite impossible to do, especially when you have over 115 students and they all beg and plead and demand to know their grade almost immediately. I consider that my technique and approach towards essay writing is that it should be an in-class assignment. Each and every day the students write one paragraph in class about whatever the goal might be… let’s say the introduction. The students, with the teacher guiding them, will be able to write and complete so. Each day the teacher will read and correct that paragraph during the class period. By the time the essays are completed the teacher will have prior knowledge of what each student has written. When the day comes to hand in the assignment, the only thing the teacher would have to do is skim and make sure that every single point of interest is included, therefore, reading 115 essays in 1 ½ weeks does not seem that dreadful.
I do this with my students and it takes some of the pressure off grading the essays in a hurry. The way I evaluate my students writing is by explaining that in class work is worth 25% of the grade of the essay. The rest 75% will be divided between essay presentation, amount of words required per paragraph, information required per paragraph, handing the assignment in on time and organization. I DO NOT tell them how much each part is worth because past experience has lead me to see that students focus on the part that is worth the most which eventually leads them to believe that it might be ok to focus more on the most valuable part because, for example, if x part is worth 20 points and Y part is worth only 10 points than “I rather lose 10 than 20” and that can’t be.
I have encountered students that do not agree with the grade and when they come to me asking why, then and only then I tell them the value of each part. To all fellow teachers that wish to teach essay writing I say do not fear to set limitations. A student with no prior knowledge is like a wolf left in the wild; almost impossible to catch and when done so, difficult to tame. I’m not saying to always keep them on a very short leash, but boundaries must be set before they are let to run free. The 5 paragraph essay may not be the best but for beginners, it is. And when it comes to the grading process… PLEASE BE AS SPECIFIC AS POSSIBLE. Students are smart when it comes to going around the established and with any flaw, any unsaid word, and students are experts on ridding those babies till the end, which can ultimately drive the teacher to loose all purpose of the assignment.
I am currently teaching Intermediate English I, and this course focuses on the use of the writing process and the writing of essays in various rhetorical forms. We can say that we are already standing right in the middle of the semester; well, it wasn’t until last week that I finally received my students’ final copy of their first essay. You might be saying “ok, even I would like to take class with a professor who takes almost two months to pick up a two page paper”. Allow me to tell you that this first essay we treat it as one treats the first born in a family, we worked on it every step of the way as a group.
We worked in the generation of topics by watching a film and having a group brainstorming session. Then, we spent some time discussing how to narrow down that topic into a question and later on into a thesis statement. Once we had that thesis statement we started to organize the main points that were needed to support the claim. After all this work, students participated of a peer review that focused on the elements that had been discussed as topic sentence, organization, thesis statement, and level of formality. Students sat with a partner, read the whole essay to obtain a general understanding and then utilized a peer review form and looked for all these items in their partner’s paper. After this activity, the students posted an anonymous journal on their experience in this activity.
Then, we started to look at the format and edition of that first draft after it was corrected by their peers and by me. We covered the basics of the MLA Format and we integrated some quotations, summaries and paraphrases to the first draft. After the paper had enough support we had our second and last peer review before handing in the final copy to me. This peer review was done differently; this time I prepared a transparency with specific items that referred to the MLA Format and supporting a paper with outside sources. We went step by step and students were giving feedback to each other on how to fulfill the requirements that were established for the paper. That very same day, we discussed the rubric and the elements that had to be included in the paper. The students took their second draft home and worked on the recommendations that their peers had made.
Finally, after all this intensive work the students brought in their final copy, preceded by a copy of the rubric and followed by all the documents that they had generated in class to produce this final essay. Right now, I am in the process of correcting the papers, so the outcome of this long procession will be another chapter.
Even though I have been teaching English for about 9 years I have never found a perfect grading system when it comes to essays. Well, my students usually come with grammar deficiency, they lack of the knowledge on how to use words, I mean their vocabulary is very poor therefore they don’t like to write because they have to look up the words in the dictionary and this is tiering for them. So I begin with grammar usage and then work myself up to paragraphs which is followed by thesis statements until they can successfully write an essay. Some have said that the three or five paragraph essay should not be taught to students but I find it very helpful with my students since many of them, believe or not, have never (even in their Spanish class) written and essay.
This process is somewhat long in my class because my students write it during the period of the class. For example if I give them a comparative essay, first the explanation of what is a comparative essay? is taught, then they are told the criteria the essay should have for example:
1. It should have a strong thesis statement
2. The essay should have from 5 to 6 paragraphs
3. Each paragraph should be from 7 to 10
sentences long which should be cohesive and
clear
4. The essay should have a conclusion
5. In class work is begun and finished withing
the class period.
6. This class work is counted as part of the
final grade.
7. It must be handed in on the due date
Students are given this opportunity of writing this essay in class because I have found that they feel more comfortable by being among their peers since they can ask questions and get immediate answers they tend to help themselves out and if they really don’t know something they can ask me and this makes them more at ease. I usually, instead of sitting at my desk, I grab a chair and sit next to them and help them out with their work, this action makes their writing process not so intense.
As the students write their daily paragraphs, I correct them as they finish, this process helps me out when I finish because first it is corrected grammatically by me and second I sign it. This signature reminds me and confirms that the work was done and corrected in class as it was suppose to. When the in class writing process is completed then the students take their work to their house and write on a clean piece of paper either by hand or by computer. The final criteria is the due date, it has to be handed in on the date it was established at the beginning of the process.
Even though some of my fellow teachers have found this process a little bit over whelming I find it perfect for my students it helps them ease the pain they feel when writing and some of them become grateful for the experience because as they have mentioned to me “it has help them out in their writing classes at the University” and this makes it worth it.
My experience in the grading process of compositions has changed a lot this semester. As part of the class I assigned a portfolio in which the students will be writing an autobiography, self-assessment pieces, essays, short stories, poems, journals, etc. Grading all these papers has been a challenge not only because of the amount of papers coming in but also because I’m always looking forward to be fair with the evaluation.
For every essay or for any piece of writing that my students give me I try to create a rubric for each of the works. Rubrics are made to try to maintain a fair judgment while grading, but how do I know that the rubric that I’m using is the correct one? How do I know that I’m doing a fair job with the points assigned to each part? Since I have a variety of students who have different proficiency level I sometimes ask to myself if I’m been fair to those students whose proficiency level is lower.
Grading pieces of writing is time consuming due to the fact that you have to sometimes re-read the essay or composition to make sure that you are grading what you meant when you created the rubric. This is not mentioning that you may receive piles and piles of works that you have to read and grade in a reasonable amount of time.
Having your students write and express themselves is one of the perks of being a teacher due to the fact that you get the opportunity to get to know them on a different level. For me to get to know them better is one of the most beautiful things that a teacher can experienced.
Grading papers was one of the aspects of teaching that I feared most. Teaching literature and writing was natural as I knew the subject fairly well, however grading paper was not a strong suit of mine. Coming into the graduate program and teaching an undergraduate course was and still is intimidating. The most intimidating part of teaching is the responsibility that I have as teacher on grading students fairly and objectively. This proved to be very complicated because in a traditional course we would give our students test focusing on vocabulary words, questioning them on minute details from one of their readings and choose the best answers to various questions. With this, students can be graded objectively and all I need is a test with all the correct answers and the grading process can will only be a fraction of what a person would take when grading essays.
Essays are written subjectively as the writer is encouraged to express their own ideas and opinions with the readers. This also carries on with the person who is reading because we are all trained to read and respond to their essays critically. This poses a huge problem as we are then reading our student’s essay subjectively and whole lot of problems will steam from this. For one, we have various opinion as to what is a good essay and what is a bad essay. What their former teacher considered a good essay I may not. I may already be biased of a student even before I read one of their writing which can potentially affect my grading process. As a result Rubrics are used so that I can grade a paper objectively but subjectivity still influences the grading process in the rubric.
Another problem that I have with grading paper is that it requires a huge amount of time and patience from my part. It usually takes me to an hour to grade 5 essays and considering that I have 55 students it would take me more than 11 hours to grade a pile of papers. The question is how do I manage my time to grade these essays fairly and not burn out by the end of the grading process. Talking about being burned out, I’m already there.
A marvelous discussion. It’s been many years since I took a course in teaching composition at the University of Montana, and the issues are still pretty much the same. The thing that kills me (and this is frankly a lead-in to a shameless plug, I’m afraid), is the concern over burn-out, which is very real. (I’ve been teaching composition for 25 years…) The plug, though, is this: I got so sick of repeating myself when grading papers that I went electronic. I learned how to program in Visual Basic, and I created a tool that really teaches and really cuts down on the teacher’s workload. It’s called T.A. Toolbar, and you can find it on the web at http://www.tatoolbar.com. Yeah, I profit from it, but it’s cheap, and really helpful. I presented it at the League for Innovation Conference a few years ago, and folks were stunned–and happy. But ’nuff said. I wish all of you well in your careers. After all this time, I’ve begun to believe it’s the best work in the world.
As a teacher I always felt conflicted about the way that I should correct essays. I always felt there should be a compromise about grading grammar and content. Now it is very difficult to put a balance between the two, my opinion is that it should be at least 85% to 90% content and 15% or less grammar. This is specifically if I am teaching a writing course. And putting into consideration the fact that I may be teaching students that are learning English as a second language. It is a very touchy subject because I always want to give my students the benefit of the doubt because based on content the students can express their ideas in some way that the teacher can understand them and not necessarily be based on the grammar which is something that takes other levels of understanding to learn. A person can have great things to say and not be grammatically perfect but that is something that the professor should take under consideration when grading a paper.