How Antiracist Writing Assessment Informs How I Think about Feedback
Before I talk about nuts and bolts, I want to lay down a few general principles that I’ve learned from research on antiracist writing assessment.
- First–separate feedback and grading
- Second–interrogate your rubric (both individually and as a class). Move away from subjective observation (which supposes that assessment should judge mastery) toward more objective observation (which supposes that assessment checks for effort at applying basic principles). For instance, here’s my ENG 123 rubric and here’s my more recent ENG 301 Job Analysis Report rubric
- Third–by “interrogate your rubric as a class,” I mean use the rubric to score papers collectively as a class and talk about scores. Let the students see how you assess. Let them question you on it. Let assessment be a class activity. (De)familiarize potentially ambiguous concepts (just this week I did an activity in which I had the class score 6 different introductions and compare scores as a class, then we compared them to the scores I gave the papers). Bottom line: it is unethical to score papers using a device that hasn’t been made transparent to students. Make assessment a part of your in-class pedagogy.
- Fourth–only assess what you have taught in class. This is a new one to me. But when you assess “grammar, mechanics, style” you are often assessing preknowledge. This unequally rewards previous experience rather than the effort and learning happening in your course. This is a major factor in the inequality we see across racial backgrounds in composition courses. So, if you want to grade a grammatical principle, then spend a day working on it in class. Then assess that specific thing in your rubric. Abandon a slush “mechanics” score.
Technology
I tend to use Google Docs for electronic commenting. I like the ability to switch between making comments in the margins and highlighting grammatical issues that I think a student can fix (and if I am in editing mode, I can do this without making a comment in the margins). This is important because of my belief in the importance of “Minimal Marking.”
Hierarchy and Minimal Marking
Comp research has shown that students can have a hard time distinguishing between the hierarchical order of concerns. Generally, I can think of at least 3 concerns, tied to the three primary canons of rhetoric:
- Matters of Invention: What do we make of the argument of this paper? Is there a claim? Is there evidence to defend the claim? Has that evidence been treated well? Has the writer anticipated/acknowledged counterarguments?
- Matters of Arrangement: Is there a path/thread through the argument? Are individual paragraphs well-organized? (Claim, Evidence, Analysis, Close) Do subheadings make sense? Within paragraphs is there logical continuity between sentences (does the predicate of sentence A generate a question addressed in the subject of sentence B?)
- Matters of Style and Grammar: Is writing good words well done (etc)
If you “massacre” a paper, commenting on everyone of these concerns, then you are making harder on students to prioritize your feedback. Pick your battles. Make sure that the feedback you are providing is the most fundamental, important feedback that student needs.
One thing that can help with providing less-but-better feedback is to follow Haswell’s “Minimal Marking”: rather than mark off grammatical errors, simply put a mark next to the sentence and dedicate 10 minutes of class time to having student remedy any sentence with a check mark. Haswell’s research found that students can fix most mistakes on their own. I do this in Google docs by simply highlighting the period of any sentence with a mistake (or highlighting the mistake if I think it is a bit more esoteric). Students can come and ask me about a mistake if they can’t figure it out.
Also, don’t be afraid to force revision and prioritize one single learning outcome. Be focused. Take my ENG 301 Job Report Analysis rubric. The single most important thing these students need to learn is to concisely frontload their introductions. That’s the proverbial hill I am willing to die on with that report. There’s a ton of other important stuff, but that is *the* learning outcome that I want to prioritize. So, when I begin assessing the paper, I check the introduction first.
Actionable Feedback
Make sure comments aim at doing and revising. Try ending a comment with the opening: So here’s what I would like for you to do. Try revising this sentence by opening with blah blah blah or try restructuring this paragraph, forwarding this idea in the first paragraph OR can you write a stronger transition into this quote, one that gives me a better sense of who is speaking, what they are arguing, and why I should care? Concrete, direct, actionable feedback.
Feedback as Pedagogy
As I comment on drafts, I keep a Google Doc open. I’ll often copy and paste examples from student work and some feedback into those documents. Often I will turn elements into that document into a Canvas quiz that we can work on together in class, or into a collaborative google doc (etc).
I’ll often copy and paste examples from student work and some feedback into those documents. Often I will turn elements into that document into a Canvas quiz that we can work on together in class, or into a collaborative google doc (etc). Or I’ll create a worksheet to use in class.
Daiker’s Learning to Praise
I’ll end on an article that haunts me: that’s Donald Daiker’s 1984 article “Learning to Praise.”
Daiker’s study surveyed 300 FYC essays. He found that 90-95% of instructor comments on a paper are negative. Wow. This trend begins in high school and carries through almost all levels of collegiate instruction. WOW. When students receive a positive comment, they are most often a generic salutation to open the longer summation at the end of an essay. “Karen, I think you offer a compelling argument against straws but let me write 750 words on what you need to do better.” When I taught the practicum, a grad TA referred to this as the shit sandwich.
Many student writers can go their entire academic career without a positive writing experience. I don’t think a positive experience necessarily has to be gushing praise. It can be as simple as engaging an idea–taking it seriously (even if, perhaps, challenging it or playing devil’s advocate to help them make it better).
But as with the principle separating feedback and grading, think about the phenomenological conditions in which students receive, perceive, and process our feedback. While it is our job to assess writing, it is also our job to establish the conditions and atmosphere that helps learners learn.
