In our Basic Composition courses we attempt frequently to shift a good part of the responsibility of essay evaluation from teachers to students. This move seems crucial. We feel our job as instructors is to have the students realize that they and not we are the center of learning: our goal is to "get out of the way" and theirs is to continue to learn on their own. We know, of course, that the students in our writing course, because they see us as the authorities, depend on us for feedback. But, we also understand the obvious lack of time: in so many weeks the class ends, and these students are gone. That fact, perhaps more than any other, guides our thinking. And it leads us to realize that before students leave, they need some kind of tool to analyze their own writing or another's on their own.
Recognizing the advantages of peer criticism, we assumed that it alone was needed. So, we had the students bring rough drafts to class and form groups of four or five. After describing concisely the assignment they were to discuss--perhaps focus or idea or conviction or development--we stood back, and all of the students in the groups spent the rest of the class period commenting on the other group members' essays. There were, however, problems. The commenting seldom took the 'rest of the class period' ; before long, the groups were no longer together, and the students were looking again to us for instruction. After a couple of these sessions, some students remained behind after class to get help with their papers. They complained that little really happened in the groups to help them. But what frustrated some of them more was that they felt they weren't helping anybody else. They didn't know how to encourage group members to explore writing options. Alone, then, peer criticism failed to match our hope or their need. Peer criticism would be more successful only if we could find another tool the students could confidently use with this form of criticism--a tool they could also use outside the class for self-criticism.
An evaluation of peer criticism in our Freshman English Composition courses showed us that the students experienced two main problems when they attempted to evaluate either their own or a peer's essay. First, they repeatedly overemphasized editing conventional errors rather than thought, originality or consistency of language. Second, students frequently failed to grasp the movement from the concrete to the abstract, from personal to theoretical--not only within each paragraph but also within the essay. How are we to illustrate these two points to students and get them to use this knowledge? We propose a visual aid that allows students to grasp the writing problem--a triangle-shaped rubric.
This triangle system uses a six-point scale and emphasizes primarily what the student succeeds in doing (refer to diagram). The triangle is divided into left and right sides, each side focusing upon one skill: the left side represents execution; the right side represents thought. Further, execution is composed of two sub-elements--language fluency and editing skills. Because originality, liveliness and consistency of language represent greater fluency than editing skills, we give language a higher score. The total possible points on the left or execution side of the triangle are three: we award one point if the editing skills are weak; we assign two points if control of the editing skills is the primary strength; and we give three points if originality and consistency of language are the primary strengths. The right side of the triangle is also divided into two skills--idea and experience. And here the idea, the formation of a definite and provocative belief, is considered a higher quality than experience, the simple retelling of what happened. Again, points are awarded: no points are awarded if thought is minimal; one point is awarded if the experience is absent or not detailed enough; two points are assigned if a detailed description of an experience is the primary strength; and three points are given if the movement from experience to the idea is the primary strength. (It is possible for a student to use this rubric as a self-help tool in other writing assignments for other courses. Essentially, all that needs to be changed is "experience" to "example" or "support.") The scores on each side are then combined.
The effect of this system is two-fold. First, the student can see that while mechanical and editing skills are important, a "clean" paper is not the goal; a superior paper must reflect originality and consistency of language. Second, a superior essay must not only recreate the experience so that the reader truly grasps the event, but the essay must move beyond the concrete, beyond the experience to the idea that seems to grow naturally out of the events.
Using this triangular rubric in class improves a
student's ability to comment on his own or another's essay. The visual presentation of an
essay makes it easier for the student to "see" both weak and strong areas of a writer and, more important, to point them
out. Because he can see how an essay is to move, since this rubric graphically partitions
and ranks the elements of writing, the student, possessing a clearer idea about the direction a writer needs to
explore, has more to talk about in his group sessions. And we can more confidently "get out of the way,"
assured that he will be able to put the rest of the class period to use--taking a more active role in
his own instruction.
[Archivist's note: Although the fourth paragraph of this essay refers the reader to a diagram, no diagram appeared in English Notes.]