Last
week we read Peter Elbow’s “Inviting the Mother Tongue” and Joseph Williams’
“Phenomenology of Error.” Since my primary interaction with students this year
is through grading assignments, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how to
produce effective and influential feedback in response to student “error,”
especially as an inspiration for revision and “re-envision.” How do I naturally
approach student error, and how should I be approaching it? What kind of
feedback is most useful for the types of assignments I’m grading? Should I be
prompting the student to think more deeply about a subject, or giving them the
“right answer” so they’ll be correct the next time?
How do I define student
error?
I
took David Ryan’s survey measuring “comfort level” in relation to error that Dr. Rice forwarded. I found
that out of roughly 20 questions on common grammatical errors, over half
“bothered [me] a lot” and the remaining “bothered [me] a little.” I’m a
stickler for punctuation in formal settings. Misused apostrophes don’t go
unnoticed, comma splices I can be flexible on. (See what I did there?) In this
week’s grading, however, I marked few of these errors – despite being “at least
a little” or “a lot” bothered – and focused on revising content.
How do I approach student
error?
Over
the course of the semester, I’ve had a few students leave writing concerns
specifically requesting “good feedback” so they can “fix all the problems.” I
often respond to these concerns within their assignment feedback, letting them
know that while I’ll point out frequent grammatical errors, my intent is to
guide the content of their writing rather than the form. For example, I’ll only
correct an author’s last name once by providing the proper name, but I’ll leave
multiple questions throughout the text that encourage the student to identify
the proper audience. (“Where was this essay originally published? Does the
author use any inclusive language that clues you in to a group that he’s
speaking to? Who might this argument be trying to persuade? Who would it
effectively persuade?”)
How should I be approaching
student error?
Last
week Peter Elbow invited us to accept the “mother tongue.” On this note I feel
[mostly] unconflicted: dialect can be appropriate in specific rhetorical
contexts, and we should alert our students to those contexts, especially as it
relates to authorial credibility. In the case of the student assignments that
I’m grading, they are all aiming at an academic level of writing (with some
suffering from what Ken Macrorie called “Engfish,” the loss of authentic voice
in the attempt to mimic academic discourse). So how do I respond to deviations
from Standard English (the academic staple) or wholly incorrect student
assumptions of key points like audience and purpose?
I
don’t have the space (or the experience) to respond to each of my questions
here, but as a last note I can outline my current approach to grading
composition papers. As I’ve said, I focus on content rather than form. But
perhaps more important is the mindset I invoke: behind each of these papers is
a student with their own set of ambitions and struggles. I can only grade them
on my perceived value of their work. And even that work that is fraught with
error – the perceived less valuable work – doesn’t necessarily reflect a lack of
effort or a negative mindset. In this arena, we are the experts and the
authorities, and grading feedback is a powerful tool to wield – with all the
responsibility that that implies.
[Below, I consider "error" to mean only grammatical error. You include faulty conclusions, but I do not.]
ReplyDeleteI want to reemphasize something I mentioned earlier (partially because I feel the need to defend my grading practices): lack of effort and error are, for me, separate things. It's easy to tell when a student puts minimal effort into a piece of writing simply because he/she did not want to put forth any more: the writing itself is often error free and logical because the student is already an able writer; however, the result is short and says little of substance--though it is technically complete! (Remember, you agreed it is easy to see.) We have a responsibility as graders, yes, and I think that responsibility MUST include drawing a line and letting students know that half-assed work is unacceptable. Several of us have seen this entitled attitude, from the "whatever" in the writing concern box to the student I dealt with today. I can't let something that childish slip by. In the capacity that I am a teacher, it is my responsibility as a teacher to say, "Hey, you aren't fooling anyone."
Important distinction: I don't think a student who makes grammatical or logical errors is putting forth minimal effort. Sometimes that is the case, but it's hard to tell within the confines of Raider Writer. When I see an error-fraught assignment, I respond to it in one of three ways:
1) If the errors are minimal and do not interfere with comprehension, I let them go. Ultimately, such errors are unlikely to hinder the student in real-life settings. I may correct the first instance of each error, but I typically focus on content. These students have, in my view, progressed to the point where mechanical concerns are not incredibly important.
2) If the errors are egregious and seem like the work of a native English speaker, I correct them all directly with some comments and rewriting. I don't have time to give grammar lessons, but I can offer corrections and hope the student will internalize them. I don't expect students to become perfect writers from seeing their errors corrected, but Raider Writer makes further instruction nearly impossible. I also operate under the assumption that most students whose writing falls under this category are not likely to read or care about my comments anyway. There are some exceptions, of course, but I absolutely don't have time to respond to every aspect of every assignment in depth. If DI's were responsible for editing rather than revision and teaching, my approach would be different. As it stands, I choose to address grammar errors AND issues with content, even if grammar corrections are futile in the long run. Proper grammar is important, and I can't let that go.
3) If I see something that makes me think the student is just learning English, I am a little more instructive in my comments. I assume the student wants to learn English and is trying hard to succeed in a course not necessarily structured for their success. I rewrite sentences more often than in the previous case, but I do assume students are going to read my comments and attempt to learn from them. Still, though, I don't have time to address every little thing.
Does this still sit wrong with you?
This question really struck me because I've wondered the same thing:What kind of feedback is most useful for the types of assignments I’m grading? Should I be prompting the student to think more deeply about a subject, or giving them the “right answer” so they’ll be correct the next time?
ReplyDeleteWhile I do not know what types of assignments you are grading, I don't think how you respond to student assignments should be the same across the board, across the semester. I've heard that a lot of graders have a sheet with comments on them that they just copy paste to their students assignments. This makes my eye twitch a little. While sure, it takes less time to grade student assignment this way, but does it actually help the student become a better writer, thinker, and learner? How many times can you tell a student "this is a comma splice" before you just give up and say, "they'll learn eventually, or they wont learn at all, either way, I'm tired of telling them over and over and they wont fix it."
This also speaks to your question of giving the students the "right answer" versus making them think a bit harder to figure out what is the right answer. I'm split on this notion because sometimes, as a student, I would say, just give me the right answer and explain WHY it's the right answer, because obviously I don't know what the right answer is, so instead of making me figure it out the first time, tell it to me, and then i'll fix it for next time. I like the way you approach spelling mistakes of an author's name. You'll fix it once, and then not through the rest of the paper. I think this is a good approach to student errors because it essentially does both: give the right answer and lets a student figure it out on their own. So for example, give the right answer and explanation for a comma splice, and then just simply circle the other errors throughout the paper. This will identify the issues, but require the students to figure it out.
Part of the problem of being a grader, at least for me, is the fact that we can't have conversations with the students. The assignment is anonymous until a grade is assigned, and the system does not allow us to keep track of individual students across assignments. There's no guarantee that the assignments we grade will even be from the same students as the previous assignment: asking leading questions is the balance most of us choose to strike between giving the answer and just marking errors.
DeleteSince we are robots to these students, we can't in good conscience give them answers with explanations and hope they will internalize these explanations. Often we're more concerned that they will just copy-paste what we've told them and learn nothing. Face-to-face conversations, or even a guarantee that we're grading the same students on each assignment, would allow us to gauge students' understanding of each error and comment (and each assignment as a whole). Since we can't have this, why not use a pre-written bank of comments for the most common grammatical errors and general misconceptions? We see the same problems 30 times a week, and there's no way to know what each student does or does not understand. Stock answers are as close as we can get to consistency and still maintain our sanity.
Nice post, and very good replies here that raise some interesting issues. Error translates into industry work, of course, in many ways. For instance, when working with a client, they don't always want to be corrected, yet they ask what they're paying you for. How do you tell clients they're wrong about something, while simultaneously motivating change and appreciating you and your time for it? What you're learning here has direct connection to where you're going professionally, Aubrey. One related issue is this: if we let error go, and the next person does, and then the next person does, where do we leave students? What are they learning? Error does matter, at some point, doesn't it, because it will matter to some audience eventually. There's a time. So, if you believe that it doesn't matter now, on a particular assignment, telling the student that is important. There are errors in this, but that's less important right now in your focusing your attention on X, instead. Make sense? To students who can't see the errors, not pointing them out can mean they can feel they've achieved mastery.
ReplyDelete