“Grading papers is the single most awful part of our job.” I recently heard a colleague say this at a department meeting where mostly everyone was bemoaning the grading we English teachers are required to do. We were discussing the teaching of writing and several articles published in The English Journal in which alternative methods of feedback were explored, and what started as a good-natured attempt to discuss real issues became a room full of frustrated English teachers with overloaded classrooms complaining about how much work we have to do in our “off” hours (as if there were such a thing).
There is an alternative, though, to grading dull essays: providing feedback on good ones (and relatively good ones that will certainly be better next time). In fact, if an assignment is well written, and if students are encouraged to think and write authentically, then their writing can be quite engaging to read and mark. One of the greatest pleasures of my job is reading what the students have written, providing guidance through written comments, conferencing, email exchanges and whole class discussion, then watching as the real magic happens – growth.
In order to help students become good writers, teachers must let go of the old fashioned notion that good analytical writing all looks the same; the College Board says it best in the AP English Language and Composition Course Description: students should “move beyond such programmatic responses as the five-paragraph essay that provides an introduction with a thesis and three reasons, body paragraphs on each reason, and a conclusion that restates the thesis” (AP English Language & Composition Course Guide). It is this kind of formulaic writing that becomes excessive and repetitive and could possibly bore an English teacher to death (especially if she has to grade papers for over 150 students).
Once teachers help students realize that their thoughts and their thought processes are as valuable as any other, then they will begin to produce writing worth our time, our energy, and our excitement. They will begin to think on their own instead of waiting on the edge of their seats for our thoughts to parrot back to us. If we strive to teach students to value their own thought processes and thus their own structures, then we can once again enjoy reading what they write.
There is an alternative, though, to grading dull essays: providing feedback on good ones (and relatively good ones that will certainly be better next time). In fact, if an assignment is well written, and if students are encouraged to think and write authentically, then their writing can be quite engaging to read and mark. One of the greatest pleasures of my job is reading what the students have written, providing guidance through written comments, conferencing, email exchanges and whole class discussion, then watching as the real magic happens – growth.
In order to help students become good writers, teachers must let go of the old fashioned notion that good analytical writing all looks the same; the College Board says it best in the AP English Language and Composition Course Description: students should “move beyond such programmatic responses as the five-paragraph essay that provides an introduction with a thesis and three reasons, body paragraphs on each reason, and a conclusion that restates the thesis” (AP English Language & Composition Course Guide). It is this kind of formulaic writing that becomes excessive and repetitive and could possibly bore an English teacher to death (especially if she has to grade papers for over 150 students).
Once teachers help students realize that their thoughts and their thought processes are as valuable as any other, then they will begin to produce writing worth our time, our energy, and our excitement. They will begin to think on their own instead of waiting on the edge of their seats for our thoughts to parrot back to us. If we strive to teach students to value their own thought processes and thus their own structures, then we can once again enjoy reading what they write.