What if you are a faculty member with a heavy workload? You have 50 students to a classroom. You have hundreds of papers to grade. You have a 3 day window to grade papers. You still have to have time to do class preparation, have office hours, teach class, and grade. Do you have the time to grade every single grammar mistake on those student papers?
You see a bad paper. You see many grammar errors. You are tempted to correct every single mistake for the student's sake. After all, you want the student to learn from his mistakes right? Isn't that your job as the English teacher? Do you feel the temptation to then explain why each and every grammar mistake occurred? Some teachers do. Some do not. What if your boss requires you to give a grammar explanation to every grammar mistake students make? How do you find the time and still have a work/life balance? And still not get burned out? What do you do?
Here are my suggestions:
1. Correct for essay structure and content only. For instance, make sure students have an introduction, body paragraphs and a conclusion paragraph. Grading for essay structure does not take that much time since most students make the same mistakes the first time they turn in a paper. During the first round of grading papers, I am usually just grading for essay structure anyway. 1 ) I make sure that students have a thesis statement. 2) I make sure the body paragraphs justify/provide evidence for that thesis statement. 3) I make sure there is a topic sentence for each body paragraph that corresponds to the thesis statement so the paper has cohesion. 4) Last, I make sure the paper is a great hook, introduction and conclusion.
2. Usually by the second round of papers, students have mastered essay structure. The final drafts look much more polished the second time around. Students have a thesis with matching body paragraphs. Now, when I grade papers, I focus on grammar/mechanics mistakes. For each student, I point out three main grammar mistakes per student and I give long explanations of those three main grammar mistakes. I resist the temptation to correct every single mistake student makes. Resisting this temptation was hard for me to do since I am a perfectionist, but for the sake of time that's what I had to do.
3. Give peer editing exercises in your class where students collaborate in group work and correct each other's mistakes. Pair more able writers with less able writers so the more able writers can correct and give guidance on the less able writers. Put the responsibility of correction solely on the shoulders of the students which saves you time grading for both essay structure and for grammar.
4. As students write multiple drafts of their paper or they write successive papers on different topics as time goes on in your writing class, student writing improves. With each paper, you will see fewer and fewer grammar and essay structure mistakes making grading faster and more efficient. You get the pleasure of seeing your students progress. Make a note on student papers on how much they have progressed since the beginning of the class to encourage students to continue to improve their writing on their own. For me, the best part of teaching writing is seeing the end results when students have mastered the core concepts/learning objectives of the writing class.
5. Teachers need to resist the temptation of overgrading that is grading and correcting every single grammar mistake as this would overwhelm the student. Instead, just point out a 2 or 3 errors for the student to concentrate on and always communicate high expectations to the student about your grading.
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