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Commenting on Student Papers
Effectively and Efficiently 

Giving the Assignment | While Marking | After Returning Papers

Your comments on student papers can do more than defend the grade you give. Annotations can teach ways of thinking in your discipline as well as helping students become better writers. Fortunately, the most helpful ways of responding to students' writing also save time and frustration. These guidelines are distilled from good practice among experienced instructors. Choose the points that suit your circumstances.

Giving the Assignment

  1. Help students see what role the assignment plays in course goals, especially in practicing ways of thinking in the discipline. Ensure that students know what is meant by terms such as essay, analyse, argue, and evidence. (See also the advice file Designing Assignments.)
  2. Indicate on the assignment sheet and in class discussion the expectations for each piece of work. Distribute and discuss your marking scale if you use one (see links to some good examples here), or direct students to their official faculty statement.
  3. Showing good (and improvable) samples of past student writing to the class also sets standards and clarifies expectations. Pointing out appropriate ways of integrating and referring to source material can deter many problems. Watch for news of iWRITE, new web-enabled courseware that can show excerpts from past student writing in a course, along with instructor comments.
  4. Don't wait till the due date to find out what students' problems are -- by then, they're your problems. Encourage students to ask questions in class. They may have misunderstandings about suitable sources, the place of personal opinion, collaborative work, etc. If students are reluctant to speak out individually, ask them to meet for two or three minutes in small groups to generate questions: three or four students together may realize they are all wondering the same thing.
  5. Show students that recognizing and solving problems in the writing process is part of their work. For major assignments, ask for sentence-form outlines or annotated reference lists. You can read them quickly and give brief preventive or encouraging comments. Or use five minutes of class time to ask about students' progress and discoveries (e.g. "what useful material have you found?"; "what surprised you in your observations of the site?"; "what disagreements did you find among your sources?"). It takes only a minute to read and respond to such notes individually with a checkmark or a word of comment. It may be even more productive to skim through the set and comment in class on the patterns you see. These activities also deter plagiarism.
  6. When students visit you, work on problem-solving along with them. Let them know that recognizing difficulties in a topic is a way of getting into depth about it. If they seem overwhelmed by the task of organizing the paper, don't just give a formula: ask them to tell you in four of five sentences why have chosen a topic, what they want to say about it, and why that is worth saying. Then encourage them to build the paper from what they said.
  7. Unless you can afford the time to pre-mark assignments and count the preliminary grade, avoid looking in detail at the draft, so you don't get drawn into supplying ideas or promising approval.
  8. You're not the only one who can give helpful comments on drafts. Sometimes it's possible to set up peer response groups within a class. Consider using some class time (perhaps in the class preceding the due date) to get students to look at each other's drafts in pairs or small groups to answer focussed questions: "What was the most interesting idea in this piece?" "What points need further explanation?" 
  9. Don't try to do everything yourself. Encourage students to use other relevant resources. Make sure that students know about handbooks on writing in the specific discipline, online advice on academic writing, and writing centres in their faculties or colleges. Other campus services also provide help for anxious students, those with possible learning disabilities (i.e. striking discrepancy between oral and written performance), and students learning English as a second (or greater) language. Follow up your recommendations by asking students about their learning experiences with these resources, and comment on any improvements you see.
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While Marking

  1. Don't write any more on the paper than the student is going to read and understand. Ambitious students are likely to read more than students aiming only at getting through.
  2. Make the most comments on the things you care about the most.
  3. When you get the pile of papers, don't just plunge in with your red pen. Look through the whole set (with your marking scale at hand, if any), and get a sense of overall patterns. If you are co-marking with others, this is a good stage to meet and clarify expectations.
  4. Don't use a red pen at all if you can avoid it. For marginal comments, try green; better yet, use a pencil so you can erase in case of second thoughts. Some people prefer to write notes on computer keyed to numbers in the margin.
  5. For final notes, computers are invaluable: you can erase and revise, your notes are legible, and you have a record of your remarks. Students see printed notes as respectful of their work.
  6. Let students know when you are convinced or interested by something they write. If you can't praise sincerely, describe partial success: "This paper summarizes the arguments of X and Y"; "You have put considerable effort into explaining your anomalous results"; "You show that you have understood the source material."
  7. To avoid a crashing "But," put the criticisms in point form. They can be explicit directions ("Next time, check your paper in these ways: . . .) or suggestions for further consideration: ("I was left wondering about these points . . . ."). Avoid writing truncated marginal questions ("meaning?" "source?"): they can sound sarcastic or accusatory.
  8. The most important criticism you can make is that a statement is unclear, or that you can't follow the argument in a specific passage. Try to indicate where you got lost, and why. This is appropriate even in first-draft writing like tests.
  9. Correcting or noting all errors of style or grammar prevents students from taking responsibility for self-editing. It shows your annoyance, but it teaches very little. Pointing out two or three kinds of error can show the need to focus revision. Back up your analysis with referrals to sources of help, and let students know you expect to see improvements. If you don't feel competent to do language analysis, then don't try. Tell students they can ask for detailed feedback on style from Writing Centres if they want it.
  10. If you feel you must indicate the volume of errors in a student's writing, draw a line or a box around a segment of text (e.g. a middle paragraph), and circle the errors there. If the errors affect your grade, say so, but emphasize that your main focus is clarity of content and communication. And remember that pointing out errors is not the same as teaching language use.
  11. Students learning English as a second language make errors that fall into fairly standard and limited patterns, even if they look chaotic and pervasive at first sight. Some are more worth working on than others. (See also the file of teaching advice for helping your ESL learners -- and everyone else in the process.)
    • Vocabulary errors in key words and phrases can cause confusion and look unprofessional. Circle and correct these when they occur in titles, headings, and topic sentences and let students know why you are focussing on them.
    • Problems with the and a, and with prepositions like by and in make for odd-looking prose, but don't usually create real barriers to understanding. These usages are complex and sometimes illogical in English, and errors are equivalent to "writing with an accent." It's not worthwhile to correct them aggressively.
    • Verb errors, on the other hand, especially in tenses and modal forms (might, would, could) can be learned. Again, don't proofread, but you could recommend that the student review usage of particular verbs forms or uses relevant to your discipline (e.g. present tenses for referring to literary texts ["Hamlet says"] and for statements in discussion sections of science reports ["our results suggest"]). Ask students to check specifically for verbs as part of revision.
    • Know the courses, workshops, and tutoring services available to students who want to invest time in learning English thoroughly. Your recommendation can help motivate this investment.
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After returning Papers

  1. If many students display a particular weakness in reasoning or style, you can best explain it in a few minutes of class time or on a printed sheet or a webfile like these.
  2. Other problems need individual counselling. Make a succinct final comment and ask the student to come and discuss a strategy for improvement. "Come and see me" sounds punitive, but "Let's make sure you understand the terms used in the topic" is supportive.
  3. If you can, leave some of your marking time for giving oral feedback, perhaps inviting a segment of the class for different assignments. Make sure that good students feel they're invited too. They often don't know why they get their good marks.
  4. See #8 above. Send students to specialized help and expect them to follow through. Suggesting a specific focus for the help ("Work on simplifying your sentence structure") presents an opportunity rather than a punishment or dismissal.
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Written by Dr. Margaret Procter, Coordinator, Writing Support, University of Toronto.
Copyright 2001. All rights reserved.

U. of T. Writing Home
Site Administered by Dr. Margaret Procter
Coordinator, Writing Support, University of Toronto
Last modified October 11, 2001
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