GRADING ESSAYS

The grading of essays on any English proficiency exam is a cognitively challenging task. The aim being the utmost fairness and accuracy in the assigning of a grade, the task should not be taken lightly. This being the case, it might be useful to underscore the major criteria taken into consideration while doing so. These criteria can be gathered under three headings the most important being command of the language, the second being the structure of the essay and the third being the thought process and ideas expressed in the essay.

The students demonstrate competence in the use of the written language firstly by exhibiting their flawless use of grammar. The scorer’s first priority, therefore, is to study the essay carefully to pinpoint inaccuracies in the use of grammar. Inaccuracies that impede comprehension requiring the scorer to return to the sentence multiple times are considered really damaging. Almost equally problematic are a plethora of minor grammar mistakes peppering the text. One note of caution however, a distinction needs to be made between obvious holes in the student’s knowledge and what may be attributed to carelessness: one slip-up could be attributed to oversight should the student have used the structure correctly in another part of the essay. Consistent misuse of a structure obviously points to gaps in knowledge. A competent scorer is trained to make note of all the above.

A second way students demonstrate competence in the use of the written language is through sentence structure. An educated native speaker will comfortably play around with sentences using present and perfect participles, reduced relative clauses and the like the way a master puppeteer does. Such a writer will use a selection of complex and compound sentences providing an easy flow of ideas. The resulting fluency gained by the essay is immediately recognizable to the scorer who is drawn to the fact that the arguments made are easy to follow and the points made are easy to pinpoint. A less competent writer will not be comfortable with the complexities of the language and may resort to more straightforward sentence structure – a combination of compound and simple sentences. However, he too will get a passing grade provided he makes no major mistakes while writing. Where the scorer will draw the line is the essay where the writer has used only simple sentences and has made a smattering of minor errors. Such an essay would just fail to meet the necessary criteria for passing. However, should the same writer not make the smattering of errors referred to and write simply and correctly, he would scrape through.  A good scorer will quickly distinguish the wheat from the chaff and assign the paper the grade it deserves.

A third way students demonstrate competence in their use of the written language is through their use of vocabulary and collocations. English grammar is relatively simple compared to some European languages; not so the vocabulary as there is a word to describe minute shades of meaning. What makes competence in the use of vocabulary all the more difficult is the fact that each vocabulary item is used in combination with certain other words and not with others. This pairing up words with their significant other, i.e. collocations, is the bain of every language learner’s life. Most mistakes with vocabulary items are made through a disregard for the correct collocation or a failure to grasp the shades of meaning in words that may be placed in roughly the same ballpark. For instance, we speak of an issue having serious consequences; we don’t use the word result instead. A good scorer will pay careful attention to the correct use of these word combinations and penalize accordingly.

One word of warning however, there is the danger of excessive zeal and cognitive bias in the assessment of the use of vocabulary. The source of the cognitive bias is linked to the deep seated opinion that students can be expected to know and use certain collocations but not others. They can for instance be expected to be able to use phrases like very disappointed but not bitterly disappointed; they can be expected to use the phrase freezing cold but not bitterly cold. Though correct, the latter may clash with the scorer’s expectation of the student and may lead him to be unfairly penalized under the misapprehension that the student has memorized this. The scorer is absolutely right; the student has memorized it and there is nothing wrong with this. Learning vocabulary items along with their correct collocations is to be encouraged not frowned on. Completely illogical as this all sounds, it does happen and the source of the misapprehension is modern writing books. The problem is that most modern writing books are overflowing with phrases and structures to be used in certain essays which the students are expected to learn and use in essays of certain types. Despite teaching these structures, seeing an essay liberally embellished with these structures often raises the hackles of scorers. Yet this latter problem has nothing to do with the correct use of collocations. An essay where the structures stick out like sore thumbs in an otherwise very feeble effort will be assigned a failing grade. An essay where these structures are correctly blended into an obviously competently written essay will get a passing grade. The key, therefore, is the rest of the essay. If there are too many clichés and too little else to judge the essay by, the scorer will have no choice but to fail the student.  All this proves that correctly evaluating an essay is no simple task.

On an English proficiency exam command of the language is by far the most important criteria yet correct organization is also vital. American high school writing books have laid down the law in this area too by trumpeting a formulaic approach to writing. Though perfectly logical, these so called formulas are not the only way to write essays provided the writer doesn’t lose sight of the main purpose of writing that particular essay. What is more, there may be students sitting a proficiency exam who are oblivious of American college writing and may just use their common sense. After all, so long as he supports his own opinion and refutes the counter arguments, does the student really need to support his own views in the first two developmental paragraphs and refute the counter arguments in the third? A competent scorer needs to be flexible when evaluating the organization of an essay and not take a blinkered approach.

The last aspect of the essay to be taken into account is the content; however, a word of caution here: to what extent the actual content and ideas matter depends on the purpose of the exam. On the proficiency exam at our university, the ideas to be discussed are provided in the form of bullet points the purpose being to test students’ competence in the use of the language rather than their ideas. As far as our university goes, therefore, ideas take a back seat compared to the other criteria mentioned thus far. This being said, students are expected to put forward a rational argument which is appropriately supported, and original thinking will inevitably color the scorer’s view of the essay.

What has been provided is a brief overview of the general principles taken into consideration by scorers at our university. The purpose has been to inform students of the complexities of correcting essays and to remind teachers once again of the criteria scorers follow.