“Be clear.” – Strunk and White

Writing Assignments
I still remember my first paper as an undergraduate. I don’t recall the question or the topic (it was something in European history), but I remember getting it back from the TA. There was scribbling all over the sides. There were phrases I could not make out. The letters “PV” seemed everywhere. Then at the end, there was a paragraph I could barely decipher and then in clear, large print “B-”. This was not an auspicious beginning to my career as a scholar. My father recommended that I consider math, since I was doing quite well in Calculus.
I learned a lot from that TA – not by what she did right, but by everything she did wrong (and I found that this was the standard way to grade among most historians). I had no idea why I received a B-. I could not understand her writing. I did not understand the shorthand. PV could have meant “poor verbs” to me. I would have never figured out “passive voice” on my own or why that was a problem. So Strunk and White’s words to writers, “be clear,” I think equally applies to professors evaluating the essays.
Here is the solution, as I see it. First, I provide the grading rubric with the assignment. My students are currently working on their first essays (ahem … are currently working on it student blog readers!). From the first day, they knew the categories I was looking for:
  • ·      Introduction clarity
  • ·      Thesis clarity
  • ·      Secondary context from lecture and textbook
  • ·      Use of primary documents from Major Problems
  • ·      Analysis of primary documents from Major Problems
  • ·      Overall writing clarity
  • ·      Writing mechanics
  • ·      Appropriate references

Each of these categories receives 0-6 points. And each student receives 2 points for turning the essay in on time (so 50 total points).
Second, when a student receives her paper back, she receives a rubric grid with checks for each category. If the introduction is confusing, then they’ll get a 3 or 2. If they only use 3 or 4 documents from Major Problems, they’ll get a 3 or lower in that category. This way, students know how they are being graded (so they know how to write it). Then, they know how to improve for their next essay (oh, my thesis and introduction were quite low so I need to spend more time there).
Do you have any essay grading tricks that gives students the information they need in a clear, systematic way? Are there other ways you make such a subjective enterprise of grading essays more objective?
Next time (maybe tomorrow), I’ll get to my lecture on the Progressive Era.

2 thoughts on ““Be clear.” – Strunk and White

  1. In my two freshmen writing seminars, I had a charming and ancient professor of Russian literature who wrote almost no comments and gave most of us (probably undeserved) As, and a grad student who graded much harder, but who also spent hours writing comments and meeting with each student after each paper in order to discuss our writing. At the time, it was annoying (could she not recognize my genius?), but she had an enormous impact on making me a better writer, and I think about her whenever I grade my first-year seminar’s papers.

    I use modified versions of a rubric from Rice’s freshmen comp exam (I evaluated the essays for two summers during grad school). It’s divided into three sections with several questions that can be changed to fit the assignment:

    1) Argument (is there a thesis? is the argument carried through the whole paper?)
    2) Evidence (effective selection and analysis of primary/secondary sources? are quotations introduced and cited?)
    3) Style (working down from the big to the small — organization for the whole paper, within paragraphs, sentence structure, grammar.)

    I also have a section for general comments.

    In addition to providing transparency, I’ve found that it helps students to figure out their writing strengths and weaknesses and identifies concrete areas for improvement. It can’t rescue the hardest cases, but many students feel less anxious when they think about their paper broken down into parts, and it helps them to focus on specific ways of improving their writing. The rubric also gives me a checklist of things to think about, and it provides a record of my reasoning for the grade that I can refer to if the student challenges the grade. It also gives me a built-in way to emphasize different aspects of paper writing because I can grade the student for their performance in each section, and then combine the three grades with different percentages (50/25/25, for example).

  2. Hi Gale,

    Great outline, thanks for sharing. I plan to steal liberally. Actually, the idea of going from big to small when thinking about writing is fantastic and has the potential to give the concrete feedback that is often so difficult to provide.

    Thanks again,
    Kevin

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