making the grade

I appreciate that Anne Curzan and Lisa Damour point out the importance of instructors telling students what they expect when they assign a paper. Curzan and Damour even encourage instructors to be so specific with their students that they explain what constitutes an A paper, a B paper, etc. Working in the writing lab, I see many assignment sheets. I find few that go into this much detail about how an assignment will be graded. Nevertheless, I think this is the only fair way to grade these papers.

Further, pointing out the areas that students need to focus on helps them write and revise. It’s like the “Guide to Revision” that we tutors give to the students we work with in the writing lab. Most of their instructors are hoping that they will think about the questions that sheet poses and write with them in mind. As instructors, we can make sure our students think about the parts of the paper by assigning certain scores to each part—taking what John Bean calls an analytic approach to grading.

I have heard it said that professors and instructors, especially those teaching English 1000 and the like, should grade student papers more harshly at the beginning of the semester so students have something to work toward. Will students continue to work hard to improve and to develop their writing if they make an A on the final draft of their first paper or on their first submission? How can instructors grade with fairness and consistency and still motivate their students?