Okay, maybe I'm a freshman proffie snowflake, but how am I going to get all of these papers graded?I am, it is to be sure, a poor English proffie and I'm teaching my first full semester ever. As a grad student I had 1-2 sections a semester, and the grading of 15-30 essays at a time was tough, but doable.
Now, in my first full time job, I have 3 Comp I classes and 1 Comp II classes. I took in 85 essays on Friday and when I sat down on Saturday to start grading, I was simply overwhelmed.
Q: To all of my grading peers...how does one successfully and sanely grade 85 essays in a week or less? What amount of line-edits should I be marking? How long should be final comment be? Do I mark all errors, or just a few? Does it get easier? Do students read what we write? Is panic the right response to my problem?
from a reader struggling with commenting ability:
ReplyDeleteI wish this advice was more optimistic, but there's no way but to divide the number of papers by the number of days you have to do them in, and sit down to do that many papers a day, every day. For you this will be 12-13 papers a day, I suppose. I was shocked, too, when I went from a grad TA teaching load to a full time composition load, but this is not really a level of work (or boringness of work) that is unheard of in the non-academic world. Grueling and boring, yes. But considered unreasonable? Not really. I also recommend spending about 10-15 minutes per paper, and no more, and taking short breaks every 5 or 6 papers--but monitor those breaks strictly, or your 10-minute break will turn into 20, which will turn into watching Sports Center for two hours.
(For those wondering at home, this is why it's so hard to finish your book while teaching a full, non-tenure-track load of composition courses.)
I don't teach comp, but I do assign a lot of papers in my classes (and have an English background, and I've worked in writing centers as both an undergrad and grad student). Here are some things that have kept me sane:
ReplyDelete1. Determine an absolute limit of sentence-level errors that you will mark. Once you hit that limit, draw a line, write "I have stopped grading your grammar here. Please take this essay to the writing center for further help."
2. Rubrics, rubrics, rubrics. I may not mark up the entire paper, but I write a coherent reasoning behind every part of the grade that I give them. It's easy, and it keeps students from arguing about the grade that you give them.
3. Be honest. Last semester I graded "hard", and my students (after the shock wore off) were grateful for my honesty. (One student actually said out loud "Oh, shit! He actually read them!") They also were absolutely shocked to know that their professor had actually read their papers and were interested in what they had to say in their essays. Know the tricks (padding with unrelated pictures, decimal line spacing - that's 2.1 or 2.2 line spacing, different point sizes for spaces, etc...) and CALL THEM ON IT! I offer rewrites on all essays (I'm big on process writing) so that grading hard doesn't necessarily doom them to failure.
4. Small bite-sized favorite chocolate confections for you every paper or so. Keeps your spirits up. When you start to know who writes really well, stack their papers off to the side, so that when you are in a world of pain, you can grade something that in enjoyable to read.
I also don't grade in red. I have a variety of colored extra-fine Sharpies that I use for grading essays.
Good luck!
Do they HAVE to be back in a week? Like HAVE to HAVE to? Who is setting this schedule up? If it was you, smack yourself in the head, grin and bear it and learn for next time.
ReplyDeleteI don't put comments on late work. That saves a TON of marking time.
Had something of the same problem when I first became a "real" perfesser. I knew that something had to give if I was going to get these done in a timely fashion, so I just made cuts across the board. Circled grammar and spelling mistakes without explanations of what was wrong, wrote "consider rewriting" next to disastrous sentences, adopted an efficient and minimal "compliment sandwich" style for comments at the end (except for the really bad ones, which jsut got lots of scary phrases like "fundamental misconception"). The papers would up getting a lot less ink in all areas. I would look at them after I was done and think "this'll never fly. They'll be beating down my door demanding explanations for every truncated, half-assed comment."
ReplyDeleteBut here's the thing: they didn't. Not one of them. I NEVER received a complaint that I hadn't written enough on their papers. Every so often someone would come by asking what exactly I meant by so-and-so, but no more often than before. It actually made me pretty irritated; I had been spending 30-45 minutes per paper when I was a grad student when I could've been spending 10 or 15.
Most people will disagree with me here, I suspect, but I'm a fan of accepting electronic copies of essays and using the comment function to give feedback. I type a lot faster (and more legibly) than in longhand.
Often, the curriculum specifies that X number of papers will be assigned in the required composition course. At my school, it's SIX papers. Yes, SIX. In fifteen weeks. Fortunately, they are all short. So, "assign fewer papers" might not be an option for you. But if it is...TAKE IT.
ReplyDeleteAs a writing teacher with a 4-4 load (not all of it the six-papers-per-semester class, thank goodness), let me begin by saying that I feel your pain. Teaching is fun, grading is not.
I begin by figuring out how many papers I need to grade each day in order to have the papers handed back on time. I allow for things like "I have a really long meeting on Thursday, so to compensate I'd better do a couple of extra papers on Sunday." And then I stick to it. I make sure to disperse the good papers throughout, and treat myself to a couple of extra "good" papers on the days when I have to do a higher number of papers. I also find that I make similar comments on many papers, so after the first day of grading, it takes less time to write comments because I've already figured out what to say and how to say it.
I have a colleague that types all of his comments because he can do a lot of copying and pasting, and he claims it expedites the grading. To me, though, it seems like more of a hassle.
Good luck!
Okay, first thing you need to do is BREATHE. You can and will get through all of these (and after this, think about giving yourself "at least a week" or staggering the pick-up days for your classes so you don't get 80-some at a time).
ReplyDeleteGiving yourself little rewards, taking SHORT breaks, and trying to stagger the good ones between two or three less than good ones are all good ideas.
Plan out your week. Do you have some days that are longer/more rigorous than others? Separate how many papers you are going to do each day accordingly and if you get done with Tuesday's stack and aren't completely exhausted, pick up a few of Wednesday's and do those too.
Timing yourself is really important. Shoot for 15 minutes a piece (if you don't make it exactly that's okay) but if you realize you're at 30-45 minutes and staring at the third page of the same damn paper, time to put it down and take a break. You can come back to it right after.
Focus on the end comments over the line comments. When they make a grammar error the first time (ONLY for the first five), comment on it. The second time you see the same error, just put "_____ errors -- see (whatever grammar handbook you are having them use)." After that, no more comments on those. Otherwise, line comments should be short -- "Work on organization" "Huh?" "?" etc.
The end comments are where it's at. Focus on the big issues, maybe try to give an example if it's something where you think they might need clarification. ALWAYS start with at least one good thing and put negative comments into a less confrontational context. When you're saying something positive, use you (You did a good job with images here). When you're saying something negative, put it in terms of the paper (the paper has issues with organization towards the middle of the paper).
This is coming from an English GTA who picks up sets of 50 3-10 page papers four times each semester. As you can imagine, you get good at figuring out the fastest,easiest way you can possibly get them done. :)
And to answer your last question, no, they don't read them 90% of the time. The end comments are for the 10% of the time that they do and to cover your ass when they bitch.
ReplyDelete"Ms. May, why did you give me a D!?!?"
"Did you read the comments I left you?"
"...No..."
"Well let me know if you need clarification after you do so then."
I use an internet "egg" timer to stay on track. It beeps at me when I've gone over my allotted time for a paper. It's not always possible to finish in 8 or 12 or 20 minutes (or whatever), but I come close.
ReplyDeleteI also have set up a pretty elaborate set of comments in my MS word autocorrect file, so that when I key ^2 or whatever, a lovely, fully-articualated sentence comes out. (So, yes, this makes typing comments quite efficient.) It's a little work on the front end, but well worth it, I think.
And, as someone stated above, I mark grammatical errors only on the first page, and I try to limit myself to stylistic comments only in extreme circumstances. My job is NOT to prove that I can write a good paper or edit their work (I know I can do that), it's to help them improve as thinkers and writers.
Welcome to the world of Misery. I've been doing this for 14 years now (the horror!) and simply gear up for grading weekends by telling everyone I'm not available and buckle down and doing it all in three days. It's the only way I've found not to prolong the agony. It's not helpful to you NOW, but for future syllabuses, you can add lighter assignments the week after just to give yourself a break from daily grading while you recover or catch up on grading you didn't finish.
ReplyDeleteI, too, divide up the essays according to how many days I have to grade them, and I set myself 15 minutes per essay to avoid taking more time than necessary.
I also use a detailed rubric which I have set up to indicate what they've done well, adequately, and what they still need to work on or haven't done at all. I just check those areas and make a final OVERALL comment at the end of the paper on what I find MOST interesting about their work or most compelling (something that helps them feel good about what they've done but that gives further feedback on how to improve).
I have to force myself not to comment on each page or paragraph unless it absolutely needs to be done (like if the logic is faulty or their assumptions flawed) in the actual text beyond "fascinating," "really?" and "That's weird." If I don't set a time limit, I will spend 35-45 minutes per paper (and sometimes more, if they are longer papers) and waste my time because they don't read my comments unless I make them respond to them (which we do in our remedial sequence b/c students get to revise after we've graded their work). The rubric also can have a section for common grammatical and syntactical errors that you can require them to look up on their own to avoid your having to mark it for them (research indicates they learn better if THEY find the mistakes).
For my online students, I highlight errors in yellow and let them figure it out on their own rather than marking each error.
It is manageable, but it means having way less of a life than you ever imagined, and living in envy of the teachers who don't assign papers regularly. It sucks, but can be done! It might mean you spend more time when you're NOT grading on this blog, however.
If you need additional help or would like copies of the rubrics I use, let me know: burblesofacynic@gmail.com
One more thing: if you want to do your grading via hardcopies, create a numbered list of standardized comments (eg, #1: verb tense). Hand that list out to your students for reference. Then you can circle and number errors, and save writing the same thing over and over.
ReplyDeleteAnother thing to consider, if possible, is staggering the due dates so you aren't collecting papers from all classes in the same week.
First of all,
ReplyDeletenext term stagger the assignments so you don't get Comp 1 and 2 all in at the same time.
Next, have them submit the papers digitally through a service like turnitin so you never have to read anything plagiarized.
If you can, grade electronically so you can use macros for common comments. I am very surprised when hitting my favorite keyboard shortcut on somebody else's computer does not insert the word "Comma" in a Word comment. :)
My last tip would be to read their drafts and make really substantive comments on them. They will come in slowly, usually, unless you have a hard deadline for them, which makes it easier for you to pace yourself. I usually have drafts due for reading between this date and this date, all significantly away from that final due date. They filter in, they get read, they get handed back.
Then when I do get the final drafts all at once I don't have to leave as substantive feedback. I comment on what can still be improved, point out stuff they missed, or write a great big "You should have submitted a draft!" on the top.
You have gotten really good advice so far.
ReplyDeleteTwo weeks. That is what I tell my students to expect, especially since I'm no longer working on weekends to get grading done.
This means dividing up the papers into # per day, and committing to doing them. (I prefer to grade in long stretches, but have only one non-instructional day that's usually taken up with prep and reading etc. My OH says no more grading on weekends, so I'm grading 2 or three at a time, as I have time.)
I will also second the comment above on rubrics. I have a grade sheet that goes out with the graded paper. It's divided into HOCs and LOCs down the left, and EXCEPTIONAL/SUCCESSFUL/GOOD/DEVELOPING/BEGINNING along the top of the grid. Then I mark, and determine (holistically) the overall grade.
I have only had one student complain about "a bunch of x's". And I've been tweaking the damned things for the past 2 years in an effort to "justify" my grades so that I don't get a line of people out the door complaining.
I make marks on the paper, but I refer them to the sheet.
I DO NOT GRADE DRAFTS. EVER. This is because I have taught at places where I had to grade drafts, and students made very few (if any) changes to the final draft, which I found deeply and profoundly irritating, as in "Why is this so familiar? Oh, because I read the same fucking paper a week ago, and nothing's changed." It's hard not to get punitive at that point (because if it was a C when I saw it two weeks ago, it's still a C, even though I've expended double the effort to read it twice).
I have students do peer review. This cuts plagiarism down to almost nil, because they have to have a draft done a week before the final draft is due. The ones who don't come to peer review are the ones I run string searches for if the writing is "out of their league".
I have 72 comp students this semester (3 sections) and 22 lit students, so I feel your pain.
Just breathe, and tell yourself, it'll get done.
In the busiest weeks, I potentially have upwards of a hundred and twenty five assignments and papers and tests to grade. Some weeks it's lower...but not by much.
ReplyDeleteI have a couple of tricks, but they might not work for you.
First of all, all their work is turned in on blackboard. No problems with squinting at their writing, etc. I can read about five hundred words of text in a minute or so. And in addition I can type 90 wpm, much much faster than I can write, so it only takes me a minute to write a healthy commentary.
I pretty much need quiet and isolation to do this quickly effectively. That's what's hard to find for me. Also blackboard seizing up at odd moments.
As for specifically correcting grammar, syntax, spelling, etc., I usually don't. Because if they have problems with that and don't understand what they've done wrong, I need them to see me. If it's just slopping editing they can correct it themselves. So, I say something like "there are various proofreading errors in this paper, which cost you a grade. If you cannot find them, see me and we will go over the paper together..."
Do they see me? No. But that's their own fault. I think the process of forcing them to write and write all the time is essential, but I cannot go over and mark every error, especially since I see that as wasted effort. Many if not most students will just look over the grade anyway and don't even read my comments at all.
For serious papers rather than their daily assignments (especially for comp students), I schedule grading conferences in my office. Ten minutes apiece, during class time. And I don't look at them until they're in my office. I highlight the errors in the margin, and explain them to their face. Then I tell them what they did right and wrong. If you force them to sit there and listen, they will sit there and listen, especially since they're interested in their grades.
Basically if you eliminate a lot of what takes time in grading (streamlining the reading/writing comments process), you speed up your grading. Again, typing 90 wpm helps.
Everything everybody else said, but especially scheduling, and staggering, your grading when you create your course calendars (if that feels like the tail wagging the dog, so be it); minimal/strategic marking, especially when it comes to grammatical issues; rubrics; and keeping in mind that most of them won't read what you write anyway. Also, assign the absolute minimum number of separate papers that will fulfill the course requirements (making assignments do double and even triple duty in terms of covering particular skills when you can); create opportunities to comment briefly (and preferably orally) on early stages, when it will actually do some good; and make abundant use of techniques for letting students decide how much feedback they really want (early deadlines for drafts, no comments on late papers, etc.).
ReplyDeletePersonally, I find that paying too much attention to how long each paper is taking me takes up more brainspace than it's worth (thinking about how much time the job is taking me, and whether I'm going fast enough to keep to a predetermined pace, is a distraction from actually doing the job, and so slows me down). However, I'm probably in the minority on that (I'm generally a turtle rather than a hare, utterly unmotivated by beating the clock, my own record, or anyone else, and actually enjoy working with my student's writing *if* I don't have to race through it. I often do anyway, but I try to create and schedule assignments and assignment steps that allow me to comment at a pace that feels natural, rather than one I have to use at timer or other outside device to keep up).
To make things move a little faster, I scan through them all quickly and pull out the ones that are obvious: anything far less than the page requirement (like someone who writes 5 pages for a 10 page paper), anyone who tries to pad with photos or giant margins, papers that are completely off the mark with the topic, or papers from people who didn't hand in the preliminary requirements. I mark them accordingly or require a rewrite. Next, I start with a couple of papers that are interesting or are from good students to start me off in a good mood.
ReplyDeleteAs for how much to mark them, I'll start marking the first few pages heavily then put something like, "You have problems with punctuation throughout, please fix" or "You spell the author's name wrong throughout, please check." For the last papers of the semester, I write far less commentary than for other papers as I know they won't come to collect them.
Also, I grade somewhere central in my house, so my family can see me and hold me accountable: "How much have you done? Are you done yet?" Knowing that they're breathing down my neck helps me to move it along!
Great advice from all above. Only one thing to add: DO NOT write anything at all on any final paper that you're not going to return in class, because as Elsa Martinez says, they will not come to collect them. Usually. Just read it, assess it mentally, and put a grade on it.
ReplyDeleteAnd for the few students who really do want their final papers back, tell them to e-mail/call you after grading period is over, or at the start of the next semester, and make an appointment to pick it up. Then, if any of them take you up on this, write comments on the paper so it is ready for pickup. But get that commitment from them first! Only the keenest (who will actually read and learn from the feedback) will bother to go to the effort, and personally I do not mind expending extra effort for those students. I think only one time in the last five years that I have been doing this (yes, before then I was dumb enough to write lavish comments on each final paper that sat languishing in my office, never to be picked up) I have only had one student say she would pick it up and then NOT do it.
I definitely agree with aemilia's comment about not marking finals that aren't being returned. Before perusing finals, I analyze what a student needs for each passing grade, and determine where the final falls on that scale. If it may be a borderline call, I take notes and leave them in my gradebook. Only once in 13 years have I needed to change a grade due to this.
ReplyDeleteAs for staggering submissions, I can see the reticence in doing that. Even after the aforementioned 13 years, my buttoned-down mind (gratuitous Bob Newhart reference) just can't grasp different submission deadlines for different sections of the same course. I personally would rather suffer greatly for five weeks out of fifteen than gradually over all fifteen weeks.
Great comments above.
ReplyDeleteHere go, from my own experience, some practices that, until now, have helped to preserve my sanity. Note that I teach Second Language Composition: extension and focus are different.
1) I make containing time spent in grading the ruling principle of my syllabus.
2) In am lucky enough that I am in a Monday-Wednesday schedule. I organize my syllabus so all assignments /exams are turned in on Monday. Tuesday is grading day, and I absolutely only grade that day. When I am done, it is fun time, which is an incentive to be done sooner.
3) On Tuesday I grade EVERYTHING. My grading tray has to be empty by Wednesday morning. This means that three or four times a semester I need to stay up till 2 a.m. That is too bad, but it leaves my "4-day weekend" absolutely free for research and recreation.
4) The day they turn the draft in (Monday) we have a peer-writing workshop. They trade the paper with another student and I give that student three minutes to scan the whole paper for a single item (e.g., spelling, punctuation, use/form of verb tenses...). When the three minutes are over, finished or not, the students trade again and we spend three minutes with another item, and so on, and so forth. The peer editor cannot make any correction, only circle what she thinks may be an error: ultimately it will be the author´s call.
5) Since research proves that systematic error marking is ineffectual or detrimental to language acquisition (Semke 1984 and Truscott 1996), and that only single-item correction may have a positive effect (Bitchener and Knoch 2009), I collect that draft, look at it quickly and mark nothing. At the end, I write a single item on which I want the student to focus her revision (word or sentence level: it is too late for larger structures). Each draft takes me 1-2 minutes with each draft.
6) After receiving the draft on Wednesday, the students work during the weekend and, on Monday, turn in the final version attached to the draft marked in peer revision. I spend about 20-30 seconds on each paper and write the (holistic) letter grade with no comments.
At the end, the total time I spend for each paper is from 1.20 to 3 minutes. Times 60, this makes 3 hours tops (for two weeks of work). Four compositions a semester makes 12 hours total.
7) At the beginning of the semester I spend some time with my students revising the research above, which will justify later my marking/grading methods. Dazzled by this, and quite impressed by my 48 hour tournaround time, students are giving me quite nice evaluations.
*Each draft takes me 1-2 minutes.
ReplyDeleteGriselda responds:
ReplyDeleteThanks so much everyone. Like others, I HAVE to offer a certain number of essays each term, 5 major essays and 5 minor writing assignments. I see drafts in workshop or conference, but only physically write on the final copies.
It was my habit to write a lot on the early essays when I was a grad instructor, but I want to make sure I get them the feedback they need to make drafts better.
I don't understand how anyone can read and mark a student in 1-2 minutes. That seems like a terrible disservice to the work the students have done. Most of my major essays take students 2-3 weeks to write, and come in at 3-10 pages. If I spent 1-2 minutes on it, I'd feel as if I were cheating them.
Thanks again, everyone.
Dr. C wrote: Most people will disagree with me here, I suspect, but I'm a fan of accepting electronic copies of essays and using the comment function to give feedback. I type a lot faster (and more legibly) than in longhand.
ReplyDeleteYep. That's what I do. I even sometimes have a catalogue of ready phrases to copy-paste into student papers open on my laptop's "desktop" for immediate use.