Evaluating Student Writing

The evaluation of student writing should be the natural extension of our teaching of writing.  Therefore, our evaluation process (i.e., our grading of writing) begins when we assign writing, it continues when we teach our assignments to our classes, and it reaches crucial stages when we respond to students’ preliminary drafts.  By connecting our evaluating to our assigning, teaching, and responding, we make our grading a part of the learning process, not just a way of labeling student work. 

In 2002, the Writing Across the Curriculum Committee offered a faculty workshop on evaluating student writing.  The following materials were distributed to faculty:

Evaluating Student Writing

Your goals for assigning writing should be clear to you and to your students.  These goals represent desired outcomes, things you want your students to know or do.  These goals become part of our evaluation process when they are translated into a rubric, or a set of criteria used to evaluate writing.  Here are some guidelines for effective criteria-making:

• Create criteria that represent important goals of the assignment.
• Describe various levels of success in each criterion.
• Include your criteria in your assignment sheet.
• Use the terminology of your criteria in class.
• If possible, involve students in evaluating sample writings according to the criteria.
• If possible, respond to un-graded student drafts using the criteria.
• Engage students in the process of defining and applying your criteria; encourage self-evaluation or peer evaluation.

In addition to considering student learning, you’ll also want to consider your personal style when you generate criteria.  Our years of training have instilled in all of us some instinctive responses to writing.  These evaluative instincts can sometimes conflict with our explicit teaching goals, and we can find ourselves evaluating writing in unproductive ways.  Ideally, we can become self-aware responders, questioning our "natural" reactions and relating them to our teaching goals.  As much as possible, we hope to create instruments of evaluation (lists of criteria, rubrics, checklists, etc.) that combine our instructional goals, student needs, and our best, individual practices. 

• If you don’t like to work with numeric systems, don’t create a grading instrument that requires you to do so.
• If you don’t like to write detailed comments in order to justify your evaluation of a draft, generate an instrument that provides the student with detailed information without requiring you to write elaborate notes.
• If you’re looking to cut down the amount of time you spend evaluating writing, don’t feel guilty.  Create an evaluation instrument that’s effective and efficient.

Our best efforts at assigning, teaching, and responding to student writing will make the evaluation process easier and more valuable.  Finally, though, we still have to sit down with a stack of papers and begin to apply our grading instrument to individual pieces of writing.  That process requires us to be focused and attentive, to maintain a consistent mindset, to weigh the importance of factors relating to each individual student we evaluate, and, finally, to make difficult judgments about the application of our criteria.  

• Know yourself: work in a comfortable environment, at a good time of day.
• Re-read your assignment sheet before beginning.
• Only spend time writing revision-oriented notes if the assignment can be revised. 
• If you tend to write too much on student papers, set your pen down while you read.
• Take breaks when you feel fatigued or frustrated.
• Read a few (or several) papers before making any evaluative decisions; you might even read a whole stack of papers, placing them in a preliminary order, before assigning any grades.
• Put aside papers that you’re struggling with and return to them when you’re fresh.
• When you’re stymied by a perplexing paper, consult with a colleague.
• If you write end-notes to students, draw attention to positive qualities of their papers as well as those areas where their work fell short of the mark.

A Writing Sample for Evaluation

The fictional letter to the editor, printed below, was created by Dr. Richard Ruppel and Naomi Stennes-Spidahl, as part of the Viterbo English Department's initiative to assess critical thinking in English 103.  In the spring 2002, workshop, the faculty in attendance used this writing sample, and the accompanying rubric, to open up discussion about how we evaluate writing.

To the Editor:

Last night, Demeter Mère de Laterre proposed that the La Crosse Common Council ban the use of herbicides, pesticides, and broadcast fertilizers on our lawns.  She claimed that the run-off from these lawn sprays pollutes our ground water, weakens and kills wild birds, and led, three years ago, to the premature cancer-death of her beloved dog.

This is the most ludicrous proposal that has ever been debated in this or any other municipality.  If the Common Council is stupid and blind enough to pass it, no one will ever start a new business in La Crosse again.  Who will open a business in a town where you can’t pay a lawn service to take proper care of the grounds?  Our fine high schools and universities will have to end their athletic programs, at least those that require fields, since they will have no way to grow grass.  Citizens will flee the city and move to places where they can do what they like on their own property—a fundamental right of all U.S. citizens.  La Crosse is full of beautiful lawns and gardens, and this ordinance will turn our city into a waste land.

I happen to know that Ms. Mère de Laterre spent her formative years in New York City.  Once again, La Crosse is confronted with an outsider telling us what to do.  This is not New York City, Ms. Mère de Laterre.  We have the cleanest water in the world.  I spent a day in New York several years ago, and I made the mistake of asking for a glass of water.  The man in the restaurant was a foreigner who could barely understand me, and the water tasted like fish.  We don’t need some New Yorker telling us our water isn’t clean. 

I also happen to know the owner of River City Landscaping.  He is a fine, upstanding man who attends my church, and I know he would never allow his employees to use lawn sprays that would hurt our environment.  I am sure this is true of all La Crosse lawn companies.

If you value your rights as a United States citizen, and if you value our lovely city, call your councilman and tell him that you oppose the Mère de Laterre proposal.  It would cripple our city and threaten our rights as property owners.

Sincerely,

Todd Vogelmorder

Explanation of the points in the rubric:

1. The student is able to identify the central issue addressed by the author.  Partial points for the identification of a secondary issue as the central one.  No points if the student never makes a statement about the author’s overall thesis.
2. A student may get 5 points if he or she identifies all or most of the supporting arguments.
3. A student may get 5 points if he or she evaluates all or most of the supporting arguments.  In some cases, students may focus on one or two, deliberately ignoring others, and this may earn 5 points as well.  The student earns 1-2 points for if the basis of his or her evaluation is hasty or ill-founded, 3 points if the evaluation is thoughtful but not well-supported, and 4-5 points if the evaluation is logical, perceptive, and well supported. 
4. The student should offer some kind of overall evaluation of the letter.
5. The student’s own position may emerge clearly through the letter, or it may appear in the first and last paragraphs.
6. Tone can be defined as the attitude a writer takes toward his or her subject matter and audience as reflected in his or her style:  diction, syntax, punctuation, etc.  A tone may be jocular, serious, reflective, ironic, sarcastic, incredulous, etc., but it should be consistent and appropriate for the purpose of the letter. 
7. Alternative:  Occasionally, students will develop creative responses to letters that aren’t full anticipated by these criteria.  A student might write a parody of the original letter, for example.  Graders might assign as many as 5 additional points to these kinds of letters. 

NB:  103 teachers should hand out these assessment criteria with the pre- and post-test instruction sheets, but they should NOT include the “Alternative” criteria.