Teacher Resources: Classroom Practices - Final Drafts and Grading

On the day that final drafts are due students can exchange essays to proofread and edit for spelling and basic errors.  You will find that you rarely need to spend an entire class period on grammar, syntax, and the like.  You should take time early on to assist students in using the course handbook, The Prentice Hall Reference Guide to Grammar and Usage, along with the Writing Program Proofreading and Citation Guides (available for students on the 101 Course Homepage).  As the semester continues, we need to increase gradually our expectations of correct usage, and you may decide after the third essay that students should come to class already having proofread their final drafts.  Students who have especially persistent difficulties with "sentence level error" should be encouraged to meet you during your office hour for more focused help, and, if necessary, they should be referred to one of the Writing Centers.

Grading is fairly anxiety producing, both for students and teachers, and so we have provided a detailed summary of grading criteria for 101.  Here it is enough to emphasize a few basic points:

The official final grades for the Writing Program are A, B+, B, C+, C, F, and E/F.  (Note that there is no "D" grade or any minus grades.)  The E/F is a non-punitive failing grade that we give to a student if he or she has completed all of the assignments, has a respectable attendance record, but has not been able to bring the writing up to a passing level.  For students of some of the colleges, the E/F will disappear from their record when they successfully complete the course.

Instructors should grade student essays in a way that is consistent with the official grading scale.  It is particularly confusing, for example, to use the C- grade when evaluating papers, and we strongly urge you not to use it.  The C- grade creates an ambiguity that, in the long run, misleads students because many interpret any C grade (C-, C, C+) as a passing grade.  In the Writing Program, however, only work of C or higher quality is passing.  Rather than use the C- or F grades, some instructors will use the mark "NP" (not passing) to indicate that an essay is not yet of passing quality.

On the days when they return students' graded final drafts, many teachers again come prepared with xeroxed sample passages (or entire papers), which then form the basis of a discussion about grading.  Having samples of student writing on hand helps to make your explanation of grading criteria more concrete: you may have samples that demonstrate a problem (or lost opportunity) most common to failing papers, to C papers, etc.  Or you may have passages that can be called "B moments," even though they appear in papers graded C.  And your students will soon enough ask to see an A paper.  It may take you a while to get one from them, but you should not hesitate to make it available to students.

Final Exams
On the last regular day of classes you will administer an in-class final exam.  The exam is essay format and is graded on a Pass/Fail basis.  Students must receive a grade of Pass on the final exam in order to pass 101.  The final exam in 101 asks students to write about a new assigned reading that has not been discussed with the teacher.  At the same time, the final exam question typically asks students to discuss the new reading in the context of readings already assigned.  Thus the exam continues the practice of sequencing, and requires of students the usual attention to essay form, and the usual exercise of critical thinking, though on a smaller scale.

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