Grading Students' Classroom Writing: Issues and Strategies: ASHE Higher Education Research Report Volume 27, Number 3

"For professors concerned with how best to grade students' writing, this monograph will be a must. It is particularly helpful in its coverage of how to provide effective feedback on students' writing. It also should stimulate most readers to new insights about the relationship between grading student writing and the students' writing process." ----Barbara TownsAnd, professor of education, University of Missouri--Columbia This report explores the connection between the process of writing and the process of grading. It also explains how to construct effective writing assignments, resolve issues of fairness and professional judgment, include students in the process of assessment, and provide effective feedback to students as they revise their writing. Speck synthesizes the best practices in teaching and learning to help faculty and part--time instructors envision grading as a process, not a product.

Table of Contents:
The Writing Process and Grading Students' Writing. Constructing Writing Assignments. Fairness and Professional Judgment. Including Students in the Assessment of Writing. Providing Feedback for Revision: Reading and Responding to Students' Writing. Conclusion and Recommendations. Appendix: Example of a Student's Paper with Effective Written Comments.

About the Author :
BRUCE W. SPECK is associate vice chancellor for academic affairs at The University of North Carolina at Pembroke (UNCP). Before his position at UNCP, he was acting director of the Center for Academic Excellence and professor of English at The University of Memphis.

Review :
"For professors concerned with how best to grade students' writing, this monograph will be a must. It is particularly helpful in its coverage of how to provide effective feedback on students' writing. It also should stimulate most readers to new insights about the relationship between grading student writing and the students' writing process." (Barbara Townsend, professor of education, University of Missouri-Columbia) "This manuscript brings together the resources about grading writing into a form that not only supplies the bibliography of writing professionals, but also gives a connected overview for faculty members who are not English specialists. As someone who comes, fresh from eight years as director of a general education program, to this manuscript, I find its availability exciting." (David Sigsbee, interim director, University Honors Program, The University of Memphis) "The report offers a sophisticated and informed discussion of the major issues in grading and responding, including grammar and mechanics as well as plagiarism." (Sam Dragga, professor of English, Texas Technical University) "This monograph focuses on an increasingly important topic, the grading of student writing. Speck's manuscript points out that while the grading of student writing was once considered a rather simple process, and done almost reflexively, it is in fact an immensely complex problem, which teachers are only now beginning to confront." (Frances Zak, professor of Writing Programs/English, State University of New York at Stony Brook)