I've found myself pondering this question today. Is it ever
appropriate to give few or no comments on a student paper? I don't mean
for a particular assignment and treating everyone the same. What I'm
wondering is whether it's ever appropriate to give extensive comments on
most of the papers in a given batch but less on others.
I
find myself wondering this because I'm pretty sure I just marked a
paper where I spent more time reading, interpreting (a monumental task
at times), and making comments on a paper than I think the student did.
In this case, this student has also attended only 3 of the 7 weeks of
term. The paper shows it too because we talked about each of the
elements that were supposed to be present in the paper over the last 7
weeks and most of them were absent from this paper.
I
know I shouldn't take it personally and I don't when students decide not
to attend class. But I do find myself resenting the time (and brain
power) I spent trying to figure out what this student was saying and
then trying to provide constructive advice to perform better. I felt
like I was investing more in this than the student was. And I was
seriously tempted to just slap a letter grade on it and skip any
comments.
In the end I did write comments. I hope the
student takes them to heart. But somehow I doubt it. I don't feel any
better for it though.
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1 comment:
K struggles with this in high school. She has a new English teacher and doesn't have a clue how he marks (no rubrik, no outline etc) and has one thing circled on her assignment and gets 10/12 (it was a spelling mistake). She wished for more comments so she knows how to improve. However if effort hasn't been put in it I would suggest no comments and let the student take the initiative if they are not satisfied with what you marked. Chances are they won't come to see you unless they are a serious student and if they are a serious student they probably wouldn't have handed in such shoddy work!
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