I believe (I wish I had more evidence than my own experience and observations) that the teacher's main role in an EAP writing classroom, if it's necessary to have a classroom, is consulting or tutoring to help the student craft their essay. But how much time should an EAP writing instructor take to mark papers?
I've been noticing more tweets and blog posts about this issue these days, so I wanted to write a snarky blog post about how to grade essays meticulously for the purpose of demonstrating how much time an EAP writing teacher could spend just on one student's essay.
Essay Assignment
Let's say it's a 5-page argumentative essay on whatever current event is going on. Climate change is always a popular topic, but rarely is one on tax reform (which was the current event at the time of this writing). Referencing the CEFR levels, this assignment is for students at the B2/C1 cusp. They had a couple weeks to hand in their first completed draft...digitally. Who takes handwritten essays anymore? Didn't you hear that some students like to dictate their essays to their computer on Google Docs? It cuts down on spelling errors...sometimes.Step 1 - Did the student write this?
Don't waste your time grading a paper that was written by somebody who is not in your class. Use Turnitin or other similar tools that check that the student wrote something original. That takes less than a minute.But wait, you're not done. Turnitin isn't foolproof. Why don't you check to see if another student from a previous term or semester didn't write the same one, back in the days before you or your program used Turnitin. This may take you several hours.
Also, I hope that you collected other evidence of your student's writing. Closely examine the writing style in the essay with another writing assignment. Is this style consistent? Are the grammar errors about the same? You expect the student to improve, so there should be fewer errors. If you want to be more certain, compare this essay with the students' complete writing history in class. Yes, this what learning analytics is all about.
If this is indeed your student's work, then proceed. (Total maximum time = 1 day)
Step 2 - Did the student neglect to use automated writing evaluation tools?
If your B2/C1 student is making egregious grammar and spelling mistakes, why isn't he or she using the grammar check on Microsoft Word or using Grammarly? You cannot tolerate this laziness. If the mistakes are too many, give it back or send the student to a lower level. Your class does not address these petty mistakes that are easily corrected by machines.If there is a tolerable or permissible amount of lower-level writing mistakes in the essay, run it through an automated writing evaluation tool like Grammarly to cut down on your own time. This should only take a few seconds, but then you have to find a pattern in the mistakes and devise a plan on how you will address these mistakes keeping in mind how your student receives feedback.
Don't write your feedback yet though! That happens in step 7, but take about an hour to analyze the patterns of mistakes in grammar, spelling, mechanics, etc. so you are ready to provide feedback later. (Total maximum time for this step = 6 hours)
Step 3 - Is the student writing at level?
Use English Profile's Text Inspector or a similar tool to determine if your student is writing at level. This will help add more credibility to your feedback along with the analysis you made in step 2. This will help you with how to holistically score the paper.If the paper is found to be at the B2 level, then the essay is acceptable or satisfactory.
If the paper is found to be at the C1 level, then the essay is excellent or praiseworthy.
If the paper is found to be above the C1 level, then the essay is outstanding.
If the paper is found to be at the B1 level, then the essay is poor.
If the paper is found to be below the B1 level, then https://youtu.be/07So_lJQyqw.
If you're the type of teacher who grades holistically based on writing accuracy only, then most of your work is done. Wasn't that easy? What kind of school do you work for? Students should avoid that school. (Total maximum time for this step = 5 minutes)
If you're also concerned about the quality of the writing beyond accuracy (style, ability to form a well-developed argument, etc.), then you must move into the next steps. If your work is done, your total maximum time up to this step is 1 day, 6 hours, and 5 minutes.
Warning! Entering subjective grading zone! Bias cannot be eliminated!
Step 4 - Did the essay address the prompt?
Even if the writing style is quite good, is it off topic? How far off topic? Comb through the essay for any sentence or phrase that takes the essay off course.What if the student misunderstood the prompt because your prompt was written so poorly? Review your prompt to make sure it lacked ambiguity. If you purposefully made it ambiguous, then cut the student some slack.
If the student misunderstood one word in your prompt, decide if you are flexible enough to let him or her go ahead with it (since it passed the first 3 steps) or if you are stickler for the rules and have him or her start over. That's a severe setback for a reasonable misunderstanding. Life isn't fair. Life is tough, but you can decide how caring of a teacher you want to be. If you are a firm but fair teacher, how much time will you give the student to catch up?
If the essay clearly addressed the prompt, it should only take you a few minutes to determine this.
If the essay got off track, it should take you at most 30 minutes to identify where it occurred and to to determine if you know why this happened.
If the essay did not address the prompt, it may take you up to 15 minutes to determine if it was a misunderstanding of the prompt.
If the student clearly did not read the prompt or even know there was a prompt or even care about the purpose of the assignment, it should take you seconds to realize this.
Therefore, 30 minutes maximum for this step.
Step 5 - Can you stay awake reading this essay?
If yes, then the following steps should go much faster.If no, then the following steps should go much slower because you have to determine why you can't keep focused.
To meticulously grade essays and to treat each essay with the same amount of attention, I advise never to read more than one essay in the same sitting. So if you have a class of five students, perhaps you can finish grading within a week. A class of ten students, two weeks. Fifteen students, three weeks. And so on. Is this realistic? Is this fair to the students? I'm sure a few of the students wrote their rough draft in more than one sitting. You can at least spend one whole sitting to review their paper. Remember your job is more meticulous than other teachers and professors, you are grading the paper in its entirety, not just for the content. You are half ESL teacher and half professor, which means you wear both hats.
If you can stay awake reading this essay in one sitting, then the student understands his audience (you) to some degree to keep you engaged. This should prevent the student from getting a low grade.
If you can't stay awake, you have to spend this step determining what makes it so boring. Is it the writing style? Did the student choose the most boring or pedestrian way to address the prompt? Or is your judgment clouded by your bias against the student that you prejudged as a bore? If you consider yourself a fair and objective grader, then you must wrestle with your own thoughts for a longer period of time to rationalize an objective response to your subjective impulses. This step alone may take you one hour.
If this essay is a breath of fresh air to read, please take time to praise the student and point out all the areas that are delightful for you to read. This will only make the student better...at least for readers like you. This should only take about five minutes.
Therefore, one hour maximum time for this step.
Step 6 - Are you using a rubric?
Do you have a functional approach to teaching argumentative essays? I mean, do you require certain elements to be present in their essays? For example, must the thesis statement be written in the first paragraph? Must the thesis statement be restated in the conclusion? Must the student write a certain number of paragraphs for the counterargument? If so, you are probably using a rubric. If you are using a rubric, I hope you have shared it with the class when you first gave the assignment. Nobody likes surprises when it comes to assessment.How are you approaching this rubric? With a deficit mindset or a strengths-based or developmental mindset? If you are taking points off because the thesis statement in the second paragraph, please take some extra time to beat yourself up for using this deficit mindset. If you are awarding points for accomplishing certain tasks, that's better. Are you awarding points like this is a game? Are you gamifying essay writing? How's that working for you? Do you think I'm joking? If so, go to https://blog.writelab.com/blog/gamifying-your-writing-instruction-with-writelab.
Did you design the rubric yourself or is it from the institution? If you designed it, is it well tested? If you just made it up on the spot, shame on you. Did you design it for the purpose of efficient grading, effective grading, or both efficient and effective? What's your criterion for determining the efficiency and efficacy of grading? Is the purpose of designing a rubric for your benefit? If so, shame on you.
The rubric should be designed for the learner's benefit. What evidence do you have that the rubric benefits them? How do you measure this? You should be measuring this to reduce the risk that it may be an invalid tool for assessment. Yes, there's more to designing a rubric than you thought. Not only must you use it to grade your student, but you also must measure how it benefits the students before and after the assignment.
Are you using an institutional rubric? Do you blindly accept this or are your forced to use it? If you blindly accept this, why aren't you engaging in critical pedagogy? If the student scores badly, it may because the rubric is not appropriate for this essay. It's your responsibility to make sure the rubric measures what it's supposed to measure.
Is the institutional rubric taken straight from a publisher or third-party provider? How do you know? If you blindly accept this, why aren't you engaging in critical pedagogy? You're giving an outsider more control over your institution and your course. They don't even know your students. How do you know it's suitable for your context?
If you designed the rubric previously, the time could vary between 1 minute to 30 minutes, but you also need to evaluate the efficacy of your rubric, which should take a few hours at least if you have the skills. If you don't know how to evaluate a rubric, add a few weeks.
If you are designing the rubric while you grade, shame on you. The time varies because I don't know what criteria you are using to design this rubric. After you design it, the total time should be the same for someone who already had one designed.
If you are using an institutional or third-party rubric, the time could vary between 1 to 30 minutes, you also need to determine if this rubric has been appropriately designed for this. If you know it has, than no extra time is needed. If you don't know, you will have to spend time asking your colleagues or your supervisor. If they don't know, you may need a few days to learn more about its efficacy from the publisher, third party, researchers, or teacher-run rubric review board.
Therefore, 3 weeks maximum for this step.
Step 7 - Providing feedback
How are you going to provide feedback? Let me count some of the ways, assuming the paper was turned in digitally:- Adding a new comment for each mistake you feel compelled to point out and for as much praise as you can give. Time: 30 minutes - 12 hours
- Printing out the paper and adding a new comment for each mistake you feel compelled to point out and for as much praise as you can give. Time: 30 minutes - 12 hours
- Track changes to show all your corrections. Time: 30 minutes - 3 hours
- Printing out the paper and using a coding system to mark up the errors: Time: 10 - 60 minutes
- Writing your own essay at the end on the student's strengths and weaknesses. Time: 30 minutes - 6 hours
- Filling out the rubric with quantitative data (numbers, percentages, etc.). Time: 1 - 5 minutes
- Filling out the rubric with qualitative data (your comments in brief). Time: 5 - 20 minutes
- Providing a holistic summative score or grade or symbol. Time: 1 - 60 seconds
- Providing a holistic summative comment. Time: 30 - 90 seconds
- Meeting with the student one-on-one to point out the good and the bad. Time: 5 - 15 minutes
- Meeting with the student one-on-one to have an open dialog on strengths, challenges, and goals. Time: 5 - 45 minutes
- Meeting with the student one-on-one to give him/her time to look over your written feedback and ask questions if any. Time: 30 seconds - 30 minutes
- Discussing the patterns you found in the writing strengths and weaknesses of the whole class. Time: 5 - 60 minutes
- Using class time for everyone to analyze certain writing strengths and weaknesses you selected from each student's (anonymous or not) writing. Time: 1 - 14 days
- Allowing students to grade their peers integrated somehow with your grade. Time: 1 second - 1 day
- Allowing students to negotiate their grades based on class discussion on the efficacy of the rubric and your comments. Time: 1 - 14 days
Step 8 - Opportunities for rewriting and regrading
Basically we could start this whole process over again. It depends on your rationale for allowing students to rewrite a paper. Was it a final paper?Total Time
So if you want to be an incredibly meticulous essay grader, let's add up the maximum time for each step to see how long it could take you.
Step 1 - 1 day
Step 2 - 6 hours (1 day + 6 hours)
Step 3 - 5 minutes (1 day + 6 hours + 5 minutes)
Step 4 - 30 minutes (1 day + 6 hours + 35 minutes)
Step 5 - 60 minutes (1 day + 7 hours + 35 minutes)
Step 6 - 3 weeks (3 weeks + 1 day + 7 hours + 35 minutes)
Step 7 - 3 weeks (6 weeks + 1 day + 7 hours + 35 minutes)
And if you chose to do step 8, then you have yourself a full semester on one 5-page argumentative essay. Unfortunately, that's a full semester of you grading and not them writing. Do you have time for anything else? They have time.
Snark
The purpose of this blog post was to demonstrate a thought experiment. I wanted to know how long it would take me if I really wanted to grade essays meticulously. To keep your attention, I added snark, which is not professional. Perhaps I should write a more professional paper on this, a research paper. I'd like to measure the time English language teachers spend grading their students' papers and compare that to the amount of time they wrote their papers. However, there's more to writing and grading than time management, but some employers don't see it that way. Just ask people who score essays for a living. Pearson, anyone?
I'll close with a segment at the end of John Oliver's exposition on standardized testing from 2015.
I'll close with a segment at the end of John Oliver's exposition on standardized testing from 2015.
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