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Grading Writing at TTC: A Resourceful Proposal for Teachers and Students.

Leticia Ansaldi, Nora Rouiller and Claudia Suarez
ansaldileticia@yahoo.com.ar johnstonjose@ciudad.com.ar

Didctica de la Lengua Inglesa

UADER, Concepcin del Uruguay
Abstract

Grading written assignments at Teacher Training Colleges (TTC) demands

careful consideration, great effort, enough time and objectivity to provide fair and useful
feedback. At present, teachers focus on grammar, feedback on content is often scarce,
and there appears not to be unity of criteria. In this piece of research we propose a
further method of correction for teachers consideration which contemplates
conventions, form, style and content. We believe that this method may be useful both
for students improvement and teachers identification of the areas most in need of
reinforcement.

Introduction

Writing in L1 is a very complex process and usually poses obstacles to

prospective writers. It is even more difficult when it has to be done in L2, therefore the
teachers task of grading those pieces of writing demands careful consideration, great
effort, enough time and objectivity so as to provide fair and useful feedback.
At tertiary level, composition writing is one of the requirements to develop
language skills, and consolidate the linguistic system as well as to test students
performance in the written media. However, a different view is gaining ground in favour
of process writing. According to Murray, cited in Montague (1995), it is a teaching
approach which may include stages such as pre-writing, writing and rewriting. Besides,
Wager (2005) suggests that writing is a constantly evolving organism (ch.13-11), that
is, the first rough draft will be subsequently improved by the help of the teacher or
peers until a final draft is produced which could be edited for publication.
At present, most teachers seem to focus on grammar when correcting
compositions while feedback on content is often scarce. Furthermore, there appears
not to be unity of grading criteria among teachers in the same educational institution..
By grading criteria we mean the varying grading codes used. For instance, some
teachers mark compositions with letters (A B C D) others with numbers (1 to 10) with
conceptual phrases (good, Very Good, fairly good) and still others write nothing.
After reading the literature that we could find on the subject, we could say that
there is noticeable concern about assessing and grading in educational institutions all
over the world.( Wager, 2005; Kavaliauskiene, 2003; Leaky, 1999; Krueger, 2005).
From the wide range of choices available, we feel that it would be possible to
create/produce one suitable option for own particular teaching situation. This would
imply choosing and adapting those suggestions that may help us improve our way of
assessing.
In this piece of research, we attempt to find a suitable way of grading that could
be applied by all teachers of writing at tertiary level. We believe that a good method of
grading would be a tool both for the teachers and the students. The former might use it
to realize which areas need remedial work whereas the latter can use the feedback to
enhance their writing. In addition, this study may lead us to produce more explicit
comments highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of the students.
The results will be presented as a poster at tertiary level school and later on at
one of the teachers national conferences.
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Literature Review

To begin with, we would like to establish the relationship between assessment

and grading. Assessment has been defined as a generic term for a set of processes
that measure the outcomes of students learning (Quality Assurance Agency (n/d). We
are also interested in defining the kind of assessment that we will concentrate on, that
is the summative evaluation. This term refers to the assessment of the product; when
we assign written tasks these are supposed to conclude thematic units and students
should apply the contents developed. We consider these pieces of writing to be partial
evaluations which will finally have an impact on the students improvement and
therefore they could be considered formative evaluation as well. Furthermore,
assessment is considered an instrument for grading students and providing feedback
on their learning (Leaky, 1999).
Similarly, grading quantifies what the students have learned and gives them
some metric feedback (Wager, 2005) According to Richards and Lockhart (1994:188),
feedback is relevant for teaching and can be positive or negative, in addition its
purpose is to inform learners about their performance as well as to increase motivation
and build a supportive classroom climate (1994:188). Within feedback on content,
which is directed to accuracy, Hendrickson, referred to in Richards and Lockhart
(1994), suggests that teachers should adopt a position in relation to the possibility of
correcting errors or not, which errors they will correct and how this task will be
performed.
As regards which errors are often corrected by teachers, Chaudron in Richards
and Lockhart (1994) states that correction of content errors take priority over
vocabulary, grammar or pronunciation errors. In relation to how the correction will be
done there seems to be lack of agreement among language practitioners. Some
strategies that could be used in correction of writing are:

self correction of hinted errors

explicit comments and explanations of errors

peer correction

(Richards and Lockhart, 1994:190)

The issue of grading, which is closely linked to feedback also helps students to
improve their performance. Both new and experienced teachers always try to provide a
fair way of grading, trying to respect the attribute of validity.
Grading is also influenced by underlying grading philosophies. We wonder
whether we, teachers at tertiary level in Argentina share some kind of grading
philosophy. Wager (2005:ch. 13-1) mentions four philosophies, out of which two seem
to be closer to our personal positions:
-Philosophy #2: Grades are based on preset expectations or criteria. Every
student in the course could get the top grade if they met these criteria.
-Philosophy#4: Grades are subjective assessments of how a student is
performing according to his or her potential. Student variables affect the grading.
We also believe that whatever the grading philosophy may be, it must be in
accordance with the course objectives, the teaching and the methods.
If we follow Wager (2005) he identifies two types of grading, normative, which is
comparative and based on statistics and criterion-referenced grading, which is preset
as a percentage or number of points or standards.
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Table 1. Types of grading compared.

Normative Criterion-referenced

Compares the performance of Compares the performance of

individuals against one another. individuals against preset criteria.
Spreads out a grade distribution. Grades may be clustered at the
high or low ends.
Depends on content. Depends on course objectives.
Encourages competition. Encourages collaboration.
Grades affected by outliers. Grades not affected by how other
individuals perform.
Does not help the student in Can be used diagnostically to
knowing how to improve. indicate strengths and
weaknesses.

(slightly adapted from Wager, 2005, Chapter 13, p.4)

Yet another more general type of grading is the rubric, which is a descriptive
scale with values attached.
In relation to methods for evaluating students writing, we may find the analytic
scoring and the global scoring. Wager (2005) suggests a third choice, global scoring.

Analytic scoring: various features such as grammar, fluency, creativity are

scored separately. The final score is the result of the sum of the separate
scores.
Holistic scoring: individual students essays are compared to model essays and
a final score is assigned according to the evaluators overall impression and
considering existing scales. (Hughes, 1989:86)
Global scoring considers writing to be made up of various features; however,
the final score does not follow a final scale.

Furthermore, these methods show both strengths and weaknesses as pointed

out by Richards and Lockhart (1994) and Wager (2005). We will include the following
tables for a better way of comparing them.

Table 2. Comparison of strengths and weaknesses of the analytic approach to scoring.

Analytic
Strengths Weaknesses

It solves the problems of uneven It takes a lot of time.

development of subskills as it highlights The overall effect may be lost when
the weakest areas which need remedial focussing on individual aspects.
work. Feedback can be negative for students if it
It compels evaluators to keep all writing is not adequately provided.
features in mind when scoring.
It makes scoring more reliable as the
scorer does not give only one score to
the piece of writing.
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Table 3. Comparison of strengths and weaknesses of holistic scoring.

Holistic

Strengths Weaknesses

Less time consuming because graders
have the models clear in their minds.
The same essays may be scored by
different graders, making it more reliable.
Students do not get precise information
about their weakest areas, although some
evaluators may provide end comments.
Impractical for teachers working alone.
It demands high concentration.

Procedure

We decided to collect compositions from tertiary level of teaching training

colleges, corrected by different teachers. We gather more than 50 pieces of writing.
Then we concentrated on the kind of corrections made by teachers to see which
aspects of the language were focussed on.
After carefully looking at each of them and producing a first list of comments
made on the compositions about grammar, content, grading, choice of vocabulary,
layout, etc., we selected the most useful and revealing ones for our data analysis. The
criterion to select a reduced number of compositions of each teacher was dictated by
the presence or absence of enough feedback.
The data was analysed qualitatively.

Data analysis

First teacher.
Composition 1 includes analytic grading of subject matter, layout and language and a
final conceptual phrase. Corrections focus on grammar. There are no overall
comments.
Composition 2 shows error detection represented by codes.
For instance w.o. = word order sp. = spelling w.v.t. = wrong verb tense
However, no correction or grading is provided.
Composition 3 shows error detection represented by codes as in composition 2 but
students correction and teachers grading are present.

Second teacher.
Composition 4 includes correction of grammar, vocabulary and spelling mistakes.
There is a conceptual phrase for grading.
Composition 5 includes grammar correction, a conceptual phrase for grading and
detailed comments on ways of improving grammar and vocabulary.
Composition 6 has comments on coherence and cohesion. Explicit feedback on
grammar, vocabulary and content is also included.

Third teacher.
Composition 7 presents grammar detection represented by a code, as well as grading
represented by a letter and a brief global comment, the word Great!
Composition 8 includes grammar detection represented by a code, a grading
represented by a letter and a final comment on organization.
Composition 9 shows grammar detection represented by a code, a grading using a
letter and no final comments.
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Data results and proposal

In general the emphasis is put on grammar and students weaknesses, while

little concern is shown for contents and organization. This contradicts Chaudrons
assertion (see p. 2 in this paper) that teachers main concern is the correction of
content.
There are no comments on positive aspects. Strengths are not explicitly
praised. Teachers seem to take for granted that the task has been fulfilled but do not
include feedback on content. However, compositions with lots of grammar mistakes
have not been failed, apparently on the basis of acceptable content, which we can infer
from the passing grade.
We wonder whether the use of codes was clear enough for the students. For
instance, composition 7 has the code written next to a line but without mistake
identification. We assume that there must have been an oral comment to clarify the
idea but this does not appear on the paper. This would pose a problem on those
occasions when teachers have not got enough time for corrective oral feedback on
individual assignments, which seems to happen fairly frequently. We believe that as
Bartram and Walton (1991 cited in Kavaliauskiene, 2003) state, teachers feedback is
crucial and must be performed in a way to have a long-term positive effect on students
ability to monitor their own performance.
It seems that these compositions do not show clear purposes since when we
read them we could not easily figure out the specific writing genre demanded by the
teacher. As a consequence, specific organizational elements, register, tone, adequate
selection of tenses according to genre are not considered in the assessment.
All in all, the three teachers seem to lack consistency in their corrections, and at
times they appear to be striving for the best way of correcting as shown by Teacher 1
who uses a different type of correction for each composition.
Consequently, we would like to pose a further method of correction for teachers
consideration at tertiary level. After careful analysis of the literature available (Hughes,
1989; Krueger, 2005; Fresno Office of Education, 2005), we narrowed the aspects to
be taken into consideration and we grouped them into three wide areas. As a result, we
obtained the following table.

Table 4. Areas of a written task.

Conventions Spelling, grammar, punctuation.

Form Organization, cohesion

Vocabulary and register

Style and content
Coherence and argumentation

Bearing these areas in mind, we adapted the marking rubrics that we have
consulted to meet our particular needs at FL teacher training colleges. We believe that
this tool includes aspects that were not easily detected in our corpus. We present our
proposal in the following table.
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Table 5. Suggested Grading Criteria for assessing writing at tertiary level.

Areas A B C D (Failed)
Very few errors. Occasional errors Frequent errors of Errors interfere
Conventions Skilful manipulation with grammar and spelling but good with the
of the language. spelling that do not grammar. understanding of
affect Occasional use of the writing.
comprehension. wrong Comprehension is
Adequate punctuation. virtually
punctuation. impossible.
Careful organization Well organized Paragraphs are Ideas are not
Form of ideas. material. Links could logically linked to the topic.
Fluent message. occasionally be organized. Message difficult
clearer, but to follow.
communication
does not fail.
Precise and varied Very few errors of Simple,acceptable Poor, misused and
Style and vocabulary. vocabulary and vocabulary. repetitive
content Appropriate register appropriate register. Register slightly vocabulary. Mixed
for the task. Full Ideas logically mixed register. register. Disjointed
development of organized and Ideas stated choppy ideas.
ideas. Tightly sequenced. coherently but not Unfocussed
reasoned argument fully developed. argumentation.
Arguments well
presented but it
may be difficult for
the reader to
distinguish main
ideas from
supporting
material.

Strengths:
Comments
Weaknesses:

Furthermore, in order to get the best possible results, we believe that some
steps should be followed when putting it into practice. Initially, we should give a copy of
the rubric and devote a lesson to explain its content. In this way students will get a
clear idea of our grading criteria. Then, when we return the corrected written
assignment we will enclose a copy of the grading obtained with the comments on the
strengths and weaknesses of the writing. This will supply students with a proper
feedback for their long term improvement.

Conclusion

We believe that this method may be useful for several reasons. Firstly, it would
help to prevent inconsistency, since the same criteria would be applied to all students
work by all teachers at the same educational institution. Secondly, conventions, form
and style and content are considered equally important, avoiding the grammar bias that
we have encountered in the teachers corrections. In addition, comments on strengths
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and weaknesses solve the problem of supplying enough feedback, which is crucial for
the students improvement of their written tasks. Similarly, teachers may profit by
detecting frequent errors and pinpoint the areas most in need of reinforcement.
However, this paper is open to further research, as we have not tested this
scheme yet. We are planning to put it into practice at our educational institutions after
meeting all the teachers involved to clarify our rubric and to suggest ways of
implementing it. Only then we may be able to reach definitive conclusions.

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