It could be said that grading is one of the hardest parts of teaching a writing course and arguably one of the most dreaded aspects as well. We create those amazing lesson plans, teach those spectacular class periods, and then end up with a mountainous pile of student papers to grade. What are we to do with them? How are we supposed to grade?
Perhaps to see where we are going, we first need to take a step back and look at where we are coming from with our grading. Kathleen Blake Yancey wrote “Looking Back as We Look Forward: Historicizing Writing Assessment” (1999) in which she offered her readers an overview of the three stages of writing assessment. In short, “During the first wave (1950-1970), writing assessment took the form of objective tests; during the second (1970-1986), it took the form of the holistically scored essay; and the current wave, the third (1986-present), it has taken the form of portfolio assessment and of programmatic assessment,” (Yancey 1187). Yancey used two terms to describe these waves and their focus in assessment: validity and reliability (1187).
As she described, the first wave was focused on validity. Is the information correct? A necessary point of course, but much was left lacking in the area of response given the standardized methods of the assessment (i.e. testing). The second wave was focused on reliability. Again, a necessary component of writing, but this aspect focused on consistency as opposed to measurability assessed through validity.
The third wave, and consequently our current wave, is a combination of both approaches from the previous waves. We now focus on validity and reliability through portfolio assessment. It is our aim, through grading, to provide students with meaningful response to their writing so they may improve their skills (at least that is the intended goal). Oftentimes, we see this goal fall short of the mark. Students take the surface comments and leave the comments based on argument and structure. So where do we lose them?
Richard Haswell took up this line of conversation in his article “The Complexities of Writing; Or, Looking for Shortcuts via the Road of Excess” (2006). As teachers, we want to minimize the lengthiness that is the process of grading (for sanity purposes, of course). Almost counter to that aim, our students want responses from their teachers that will improve their writing. Haswell proposed that “Discourse activity theory has added the complication that as all human practices, teacher-student interactions, including teacher response to student writing, are mediated by cultural tools, especially language but not exclusively language,” (1264). This perspective is a potential means of assessing the lack of communication and a reevaluation of the common-grounds between our goals as teachers and the needs of our students. Our human practices and cultural tools differ so we need to see our goals (as teachers) in writing assessment differently to take into account the actual needs of our students in conjunction with what we value they need to know. So the question stands: How do we cross the divide to reach our students?
Part of this negotiation that we need to have in writing assessment is a reevaluation of our expectations and theirs. According to Paul du Guy (1997) and elaborated upon by Haswell, there are five “activity nodes” which interrelate and shape our language practices: consumption, identity, representation, regulation, and production ( Haswell 1264).
Using the above image of interrelationships within culture, we can start to dissect influences writing and thus writing assessment. All writing response is a regulation of some idea (Haswell 1265). Students consume (consumption) specific types of writing response more readily than others (i.e. Surface remarks versus structural comments) (Haswell 1270). Production plays out in the amount of writing students produce and consequently how much teachers have to grade (Haswell 1265). Representation is apparent in both teachers and students thus forming expectations based on those characteristics which finally ties to identity which is how we think we shape ourselves or reflect ourselves to the world (Haswell 1265).
All components produce complicated lines of inquiry which further tangle the web of interrelationships between students and teachers, especially when it comes to writing assessment. It is through the third wave of writing assessment that we have come to really grapple with these five nodes of culture. Writing is a social act and thus writing assessment is a social act as well (Yancey 1198).
While we do not have any answers on how best to approach this complexity that is grading, that does not mean that we are at a loss. Rather, at our current stage of writing assessment we are focusing on the portfolio. This offers us as teachers, a unique perspective into how we negotiate the culture circuit. Not only do we see the papers that our students produce but we can see into their writing process through the portfolio.
Their writing portfolios offer us a glimpse into what their composing process is along with how they approach revision and comments. Frequently students do not take all the suggestions that we offer them (specifically the argumentation and structurally focused comments), but by studying what types of comments they do take, we can better revise our own methods of grading to give them responses that they will apply to their writing.
That being said, we cannot simply do away with comments that the students seem to disregard either. Those comments may be meant to be teaching moments. Structure and argument are integral parts of writing and are nothing to sneeze at and throw away like students tend to do. Perhaps as teachers, our mission should be to find ways to address these issues some other way besides through the disregarded comments on papers which we spend hours writing while grading. A kill two birds with one stone approach if you will.
If students have issues with structural organization and do no understand your comments (or choose to ignore those comments) then something is being said about their needs as students that we need to address as teachers, our cultural perspectives are disconnected. A possible approach could be to take those overall comments that we might have written in the margins of their papers and create meaningful activities that will help generate better understanding for them regarding those elusive topics that they struggle with such as structure, organization, and argument strategy.
As we navigate the confusing waters of grading and writing assessment, we can keep the ideas of previous waves (validity and reliability) but there remains a need for reevaluation with the student in mind to give them the feedback they value but also those comments that they need for their writing that we view as important as teachers. Nevertheless, we must also keep in mind the teacher needs such as time dedication and teaching. There are no clear answers as to how we need to address the issue of grading but “teachers carry on,” (Haswell 1283) and we shall continue to grow with our students by bettering our writing assessment strategies.
Works Cited
Haswell, Richard. “The Complexities of Responding to Student Writing; Or, Looking for Shortcuts via the Road of Excess.” The Norton Book of Composition Studies. Ed. Susan Miller. New York: W. W. Norton, 2006. 1262-1289. Print.
Yancey, Kathleen. “Looking Back As We Look Forward: Historicizing Writing Assessment.” The Norton Book of Composition Studies. Ed. Susan Miller. New York: W. W. Norton, 1999. 1186-1204. Print.
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