Marking

I spent part of yesterday evening retyping* one of my undergraduate essays for my students to use in a workshopping practice session. (Yes, I do have a masochistic side. Why do you ask?) As I went along, I couldn't help noticing a number of grammatical errors that had escaped my nineteen-year-old self--misplaced modifiers, parallelism, etc. I also couldn't help noticing that my professor hadn't marked any of them.

Professors seem to fall into two main types: the copyeditors, who circle, correct, or otherwise note every screwup; and the holistic readers, who look at the Big Picture and never mark anything. (Obviously, there are folks who fall somewhere between the two, but bear with me.) Which is more helpful? I've always been a copyeditor, partly because I was one for a bit, but also because I believe that my remit as an instructor includes teaching grammatical skills. But does marking everything actually work? The holistic approach, which focuses on the overall argument, certainly produces punchier, more concise comments. And yet I can't help thinking that, really, my professor should have told me that I'd misplaced a modifier.

*You try photocopying dot matrix print from thirteen years ago...

Comments

[Courtney]

Please, please, please mark me up. Otherwise, how the hell will I know what to fix!!

[David Salmanson]

Try looking for patterns in the errors. Mark up the first couple of run-ons and then note on a separate sheet of paper: You need to work on run-on sentences. Take your time to explain your ideas. You do not need to cram them all into one sentence." Or something similar. You can even add:"Other run-ons are marked with a 1" so they can see how prevalent they are. Students like this because a) nobody likes getting papers back covered in comments. It is scary. b) they can focus on a specific skill that is pointed out to them. They will try to fix every sentence and never see the pattern of the mistake or try to fix its cause. c) if you are really heroic, make a grammar book mandatory and add "review rules about run-ons on page 26" Most high school students never learn grammar (although it is starting to make a comeback) and have no idea what the rules actually are or the reasons behind them.