Sunday, January 28, 2007
HOC vs. LOC
After reading the pieces on grading this week, I am skeptical of some of the advice offered by Curzan and Damour in the section “Keeping Control of Grading Time” (page 147). While they recommend spending no more than 20-30 minutes per paper, I’ve heard some professors/graduate students advocate a speedy and efficient ten minutes each. I’m much more inclined to side with Curzan and Damour and devote 20-30 minutes, but I nevertheless balked at their assertion that the graduate instructor can’t tackle EVERY flaw in a student’s paper. While this seems to be sound advice, and something I certainly practice in the Writing Lab (HOC vs. LOC!), I resist the idea as an instructor. It seems unfair on my part to withhold information that would improve the student’s revised paper. Moreover, if I wait to effectively comment on the LOC until the second draft of the paper, won’t the student have trouble understanding why I didn’t critique the issue in the first submission? Besides, no matter how seemingly insignificant a student’s error may be (and I don’t think a student’s failure to grasp secondary sources is as minor as Curzan and Damour seem to believe, an example also on page 147), that LOC is a factor in the paper’s overall grade. I know I can’t afford to spend an hour on every draft, but I really want my students to improve. I feel it’s my duty to highlight and elucidate every point of their paper that could use revision, but perhaps that’s just unrealistic. Any suggestions?
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2 comments:
Liz,
I concur. I think that this is one of the really awkward things about being simultaneously a graduate student and an instructor. We cannot possibly take as much time as we would like to grade and take as much time as we would like to prepare for our own classes. Didn't Semenza suggest like 15 minutes per paper or something ridiculous like that?
It seems to me that grading is the worst thing that we do as instructors. I would like to just teach students and let their achievements be the reward for their efforts, rather than a grade. I think that education would be very different without grades, but, unfortunately, that is not (yet) our choice to make.
I want to be able to tell them everything that they need to correct so that the papers can be as perfect as possible when they turn them in, but ultimately I don't think that I care much about spelling, grammar, and punctuation, so long as the paper is readable. I can't imagine ever taking off more than 10% of the paper grade for such things, and I bet it would be more like 5% or less. So, ultimately, by only (or primarily) grading the HOCs, we are helping them with the things that really matter. It's too bad we have to choose, though.
--Bri
I agree that 15 minutes is way too fast for a first submission; 30 minutes to read and give thoughtful, constructive advice seems more realistic. But consider: with 2 full classes, that's 40 students, which is 20 hours of grading! No easy task. But second submissions wouldn't need this much time, since part of what you are doing is evaluating revision- a paper with little revision, whether due to laziness or less need, will require less time to grade. Also you can no longer help the student improve that paper, though you can help them improve general habits- and that will take less time to comment on.
Joe
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