Saturday, October 13, 2012

Three types of comments I put on undergraduate essays

One way that I grade undergraduate essays is to read through them and mark them up with comments,, question marks, and grammatical corrections (and circles around misspelled words). Then I go through the papers again and read my comments. 

 One level of comment is the simple indication that I don't get what you're talking about, or an indication that your spelling, word choice, or grammatical mistakesl are all I can see. If a paper has a lot of these, it can't possibly be an effective argument for any point of view. 

Another level of comment is a question, how do you know this? It means I think you need to explain further in the text or cite some source, or use a direct quote to justify the statement you just made. You might be right, but you haven't established it yet. 

The best kind of comment from my point of view is me arguing, in a cramped little marginal note, with the statement you just made. You have said something that I have to respond to. Congratulations! Now the fun begins. 

Oh, yes. Sometimes I do write "good" or even "good!" This is certainly good for you, but not as much fun for me as the argument.

Image of  an alternative procedure thanks to Dr. Spaulding:

1 comment:

  1. "Oh, yes. Sometimes I do write "good" or even "good!" This is certainly good for you, but not as much fun for me as the argument."

    Haha, I love it. Great blog. I am glad I found it.

    ReplyDelete