Tips for Handling the Paper-load
Carol Manning, WI Program
(Adapted from a presentation at the 1998 Summer Workshop)
Ah, the paper-load. It’s the Writing Intensive teacher’s plague. All those papers to be read, to be discussed in conferences with students, to be marked and graded. While writing-across-the-curriculum theorists promise that a WI course need not take more of a teacher’s time than a non-WI version of the same course, WI practitioners exclaim, “It just isn’t true!”
Can’t we do something about the paper-load? Can’t we make this otherwise rewarding WI experience less tedious? Surely we can. Here are some tips that can reduce the time you spend on student papers-and, at the same time, may improve your WI teaching.
- Design clear, appropriate writing assignments that include guidelines for completing them and criteria on which the writing will be evaluated. If you want to promote good writing, you have to give well-designed writing assignments thoughtfully related to the course’s goals. By including on your assignment sheet a statement of your objectives in making that particular assignment and an explanation of the criteria on which you will judge the results, you will reduce the students’ anxiety about the assignment (“I just didn’t’ know what the teacher wanted”) and will increase their chances of success. Moreover, you will reduce the struggle and hence the time you may have experienced in the past in grading papers since you will now have clearly stated criteria against which to measure the students’ work. A little more time spent in designing an assignment can significantly reduce the time spent in grading the assignment.
- Require fewer graded writing assignments and give more time to and guidance for the ones you keep. If you’ve been grading five or more writing assignments per course, you might try reducing the number to three (the WI minimum) or four. You can have the students do as much writing as before by substituting informal, preparatory writing for some of the previous graded writing. You might be surprised to find that less can actually be better: informal, ungraded writing such as journal pieces, responses to study questions or to impromptu in-class questions, on-line discussion groups, and preliminary drafts of formal papers can result in improved learning and improved writing. Moreover, ungraded writing assignments produce less stress for students and require less time of teachers.
- Require fewer pages. Traditionally, the long research paper – ten to 25 pages – has been the standard. Yet short papers can be just as effective learning experiences as long ones. In many if not most cases, you can discover as much about what the student knows about the subject matter – and about writing – from a five-page paper as from a 25-page one. Save the long paper for a capstone course in the major; and even then, you might find that the task is more manageable for teacher and student – and the learning enhanced-if you have the student complete the paper in stages, as smaller assignments and/or through multiple drafts. Another example: even with journal writing and on-line discussions, less can be as effective as more. Rather than expecting students to write in their journals or to participate in an on-line class-chat multiple times a week, ask them to do so once a week. Avoid student burn-out.
- Don’t feel compelled to grade - or even to read - everything your students write. Much of the writing in a writing intensive course should be informal writing designed to enhance learning and class discussion and to prepare the students for the course’s formal writing. But, you say, if I don’t read or grade their writing, the students won’t take it seriously. True, students put minimal effort into assignments that they see as busywork. So don’t assign busywork. Rather, make the purpose of the assignment clear, and provide an audience for it. Usually, that audience will be other students in the class. Most students don’t want to embarrass themselves in front of their classmates, so they will try to produce writing worth reading. The on-line chats have classmates as built-in audience. You can use classmates as frequent audience also for the journal writing you have your students do and for short, impromptu class writing such as responses to a question you pose. Besides having a few students read their responses aloud to initiate class discussion, take a few minutes of class time to have students exchange and read each other’s pieces. You might ask the students to write a brief note to their fellow author about what she or he has written.
- Don’t read and respond to every draft of a paper yourself. Instead, use your students to review one another’s drafts. Yes, the comments of novice critics will likely be overly generous and not helpful, so you will have to train them as constructive critics. Referring to your stated criteria for evaluating the paper, lead the class through a critique of a sample draft for that assignment, preferably a draft volunteered by someone in the class. (I like to place the draft on the overhead projector.) Prepare a critique guide for the students to use as they then review one another’s papers.
- Conferencing: Do not feel compelled to confer with every student on every draft or paper. Do not be a crutch for the student. Make use of peer critics and the Writing Center. And try split conferences: confer with half the class on a draft of paper #2 and the other half on a draft of paper #3. Require the half that is not seeing you to get a critique from a classmate (using your peer critique guide) or to take the draft to the Writing Center for a review.
- Practice cold conferencing – and limit the amount of time you allow for each conference. You’ll double the time you spend on the student’s draft if you read and comment on it before the conference and then go over it with the student in conference. So, instead, have the student bring the draft to the conference, and read it cold right there. If you’ve established clear objectives and evaluation criteria for the assignment, you’ll not find this cold-conferencing intimidating, and you’ll be able to accomplish it within the time you’ve allotted for the conference. As you read, look for the big picture: what is the major problem with this draft? What is working and what is not? If you try to identify all the weaknesses, you will overburden the student. Let the student know the major areas that need work, and give her or him some guidance in dealing with them.
- If you plan to read and/or grade the student’s journal or on-line contributions, don’t read and grade the whole thing. Understandably, not everything the student writes in the informal journal or the on-line forum is worth your attention. Ask the student to mark a selection of entries for you to read: specify the number, but make it no more than half of the required entries. The student will appreciate this chance to offer only her or his best for your eyes.
- Practice minimal marking. Whether responding to a draft or finished paper, don’t mark everything. Don’t bleed on the paper. Be coach and teacher, not editor and judge. If you cover the paper with comments, you will overwhelm and discourage the student – as well as make the student’s own writing no longer visible. So don’t appropriate the text. Here are some ways to make less marking count for more:
- Look at the big picture. Identify the paper’s major problem or problems (Focus? Coherence? Incorrect information? Poor research?), and lightly mark one or two passages as illustration. Then in an end comment, explain the problem, and urge the student to look through the paper to find more examples.
- Do not go through the paper marking and/or correcting all sentence-level errors. You are the student’s teacher, not her copy-editor. Instead of marking the paper heavily, circle the errors in a paragraph or two, and in a marginal or end comment, tell the student what types of errors recur in the paper, and ask the student to consult a writing handbook or the Writing Center for guidance on how to correct these – and to see you if she needs further clarification.
- Don’t appropriate the text; allow the student her own voice. Sure, your word choice might be more felicitous than the student’s, but is hers wrong? Remember that she is a student, lacking your experience and sophistication. So don’t substitute your language for hers.
10.Don’t grade drafts of papers;
grade only the final product. Drafts
are works in progress; they are for
practice. Multiple drafts give the
student the opportunity to discover
what she wants to say and to find a
way to say it. But, finally, drafting
must end, and a finished paper must
be presented for grading.
11.Rarely allow – or, at least, rarely
grade – a rewrite of a graded paper.
Stress that rewriting belongs to the
drafting stage. Drafting is rewriting.
Students should put their revision
effort into those preliminary drafts.
And a final draft should be … final.
Once a paper is graded, it is time to
turn one’s efforts to the next writing
assignment.