A contribution from Vic Penuel, Texas A&M at Galveston

Vic Penuel, a lecturer in Technical Writing and a resource for W courses on the Galveston campus, is developing a brief series of approximately ten of these tips from a writing instructor. They will be completed as the spring 2008 semester starts.  Any instructor on either campus can request the series by emailing Vic at penuelv@tamug.edu.

Use a scorecard

One of the easiest ways to lighten your grading load is to use a scorecard. As a developmental exercise leading to writing an academic paper, I like to hand out an article from a peer reviewed journal or a periodical and ask students to write an abstract for it.

The abstract will tell me whether they can summarize effectively, selecting key points and presenting them in their own words. My assignment description requires a reference style citation and a clear simple title. The reference must be in APA, CMOS (Chicago Manual of Style) or something appropriate for the course.

My score card might read:           

In the assignment description, I list the required elements and explain the point value of each, for example  “inclusion of essential information” as part of the summary, and I stress that nothing appears in the summary which is not part of the original and that it must appear in the same sequence as in the article.  On my scorecard (which I attach as a cover when I return the paper), I make comments such as “You left out the findings about dolphins as bioindicators” or “you covered these in a sequence which differs from the original.”  I then give them a score, 35/40. 

In the language section, I may list “run on sentences, fragments, and single-plural shifts (I mark one or two on the paper) and a score, 20/30.  Students learn how to score points. I focus on grading things I want to teach in the assignment, emphasizing title, summary, and citation format.  Most upper level students have few serious language problems and those are largely habit.  Identifying habits early in the semester gives them time to develop new ones rather than losing points repeatedly for the same error, an error unrelated to their knowledge or skill in the course content.

Occasionally, I encounter a student whose basic skills are weak enough to threaten his or her ability to pass.  I give extra attention, but I also refer the student to the University Writing Center, his or her favorite writing teachers, or a top student worker to support my efforts.  This gets the student needed help and keeps me focused on teaching students how to write abstracts, materials and methods, persuasive arguments and other elements of academic writing. 

The scorecard changes with each assignment-focusing on the things most important to the particular assignment. It can be as simple or as complex as needed. Students learn to depend on it in evaluating their own efforts. Removing the mystique from writing gives them confidence and helps remove writer’s block.  The scorecard is useful in peer reviews.  Because it is systematic, it keeps me from bogging down in detail unrelated to course objectives.  Most important, students I believed can’t write can write.  They just needed someone to define the territory, someone to show them how, someone to keep score. 

There is no mystique in the scorecard.  It is in the back of my mind as I grade since I know what I will count off for, add on for or disregard, but as I grade, it becomes fuzzy and I bog down.  Creating a scorecard, putting it on paper, makes it clear.  It becomes a checklist; I go through the steps and record the points. Because I am an academic, when I explain it to friends looking for a simple way to improve student writing while controlling their workloads, I explain it in English teacher jargon.  . . . I make it sound impressive. I call it a rubric.