1. The holistic rubric devotees who simply parrot standardized writing test grading by assigning numerical scores for “catch-all” writing categories or

2. The red-ink zealots who mark every single error and writing issue with their secret codes, a.k.a. diacritical proofreading marks and extensive writing comments.

The first approach of the holistic rubric hardly merits comment. Students merely look at the total score and continue the same errors or writing issues on the subsequent draft and next writing assignment. Intuitively, the second approach would seem to produce some benefit; however, the writing research is clear that student response to extensive marks and comments on rough drafts is minimal and the transfer of learning from such comments on final drafts to the next writing assignment is almost non-existent.

A middle ground can achieve more results. However, we have to make a distinction between rough drafts and final drafts. Researchers have found that marks on final drafts have little effect on student’s application to subsequent writing tasks (Dudenhyer 1976; Beach 1979; Thompson 1981; Harris 1978). But, conscientious teachers should make comments on rough drafts and writing research does support this practice. But how many essay comments make sense? And what kind of essay comments produce the produce the most revision and application to future writing tasks?

How Many Essay Comments

Many teachers take pride in the number of essay marks and comments they make on a paper. Some colleagues buy red pens by the truckload and spend significant time at their task. However, writing research has some disheartening news for these teachers. No significant difference in the quality of student writing was found between those teachers who marked all mistakes as compared to those teachers who made only minimal (Arnold 1964). Also, writing extensive comments does not improve student’s writing (Harris 1978; Lamberg 1980). Additionally, most students are able to respond effectively to no more than five comments per composition (Shuman 1979).

Clearly, more is not necessarily better. Knowing the student’s individual needs from frequent writing will help teachers prioritize which marks and comments will most help that student’s writing.

What Kind of Comments

Students tend to revise errors more so than issues of style, argument, structure, and content. The reason is simple: it’s easier to revise errors. Research shows that teachers tend to follow the same pattern as students: they mark and comment on errors much more often than on matters of style, argument, structure, and content (Connors and Lunsford 1988). So, teachers should keep in mind a balance between errors and writing issues when making essay comments. When a minimal credit is awarded for writing revisions, students tend to gravitate toward fixing the errors, rather than tackling the tougher chore of the writing issues. Awarding more points for writing revision and holding students accountable for addressing all marks and comments will motivate more and more meaningful revisions.

Teachers tend to mark errors with some form of diacritical mark, such as “cs” for a comma splice, and write brief comments, such as “awkward” for style or content. However, Hairston (1981) found that students tended to revise more when explanations were provided, rather than simple error identification. So, comments work better than simple diacritical marks.

So, which comments are most important to include? Clearly, issues of coherence and unity merit comments. So would issues of organization, content, and evidence. Hairston also suggested focusing comments on those issues which readers found to reflect lack of writing expertise. For example, nonstandard verb forms such as brung instead of brought are considered more egregious status indicators than a who-whom mistake. Good teachers can certainly make informed judgments about which comments to include and which comments to avoid.

So, to summarize how many essay comments and what kind, writing research would suggest the following:

• Comment on rough drafts, not final drafts.
• Limit the amount of comments and individualize those to the needs of the student writer.
• Balance the types of comments between writing errors and issues of style, argument, structure, and evidence.
• Hold students accountable for each mark or comment.
• Comments are better than diacritical marks alone.
• Comments should explain what is wrong or explain the writing issue.

Teacher wishing to improve their response to student writing may wish to download The Pennington Manual of Style with the accompanying bank of 438 Essay e-Comments. With a simple click of the mouse, teachers can insert and personalize comments into Microsoft Word® documents. The comments provide definition, example, and explanation of the writing issue and how to revise. Comments include

• Essay Organization and Development
• Coherence
• Word Choice
• Sentence Variety
• Writing Style
• Format and Citations
• Parts of Speech
• Grammatical Forms
• Usage
• Sentence Structure
• Types of Sentences
• Mechanics
• Conventional Spelling Rules

Now, I realize that I have lost a number of my readers after that opening paragraph. When we hear about such examples, we feel a mixture of aspiration and guilt. We want to have a similar impact on our students. Teachers are idealists. We want to make a difference in the lives of our students, and we believe that reading and writing are key ingredients to living a meaningful and productive life. However, most of us fail to measure up to our own expectations. Guilt sets in. No one likes guilt, so we conjure up essay comment excuses.

Excuses to Avoid Writing Essay Comments

I would, buts.

• I would, but I already work a 60 hour week. That community college professor described above teaches fewer classes and does not have adjunct duties such as dances, football games, etc.
• I would, but “they” cut my teaching days/salary.
• I would, but my colleagues don’t have the same commitment as I do, so I follow their lead. We sometimes do read-arounds, so I have to grade as they do so as not to spoil their objectivity.

Rationalizations

• My students don’t/won’t read my essay comments anyway. They glance at the grade, skim the comments, and trash their papers.
• I use a holistic rubric or a 6 Traits +1 matrix so my students get a general feel for what they did well and what they need to work on. More detailed comments might draw students away from the “big picture.”
• I have to grade the way students will be tested. Their standardized test uses a four-point rubric with no comments. Teaching has become test-prep.

Working Smarter, Not Harder

Let’s face it. We’ve all used one or more of those excuses to avoid the hard work of commenting on student papers. But we know that specific comments are the keys to writing improvement. Commenting throughout the writing process is simply a necessary component of effective writing instruction. We know that essay comment excuses are just that-excuses. Please comment on this post to add on more. I’ve just given you the excuses I’ve personally used over the years.

So, how can we do a great job with essay response and still maintain some semblance of a life outside of work? Canned comments. Ones to cut and paste from your computer. But… really good ones. Prescriptive ones that that define the writing issues and provide examples… Ones that target specific writing style, grammar, usage, organization, evidence, spelling… everything. Ones that you choose and are not chosen for you by some automatic grading program. Ones that you can easily personalize and are truly authentic. Ones that allow you to insert links for content references or even writing practice. Ones that allow you to differentiate instruction. Ones that students will have to read and respond to… Ones that will save teachers time.

My professor colleague came up with 438 such essay e-comments. You can use them to grade online or paper submissions. The comments are included in a style manual for you and your students-sort of an interactive Strunk and White. The download for the style manual and e-comments costs only a nickel-just so it can be processed through a shopping cart.

I’m the professor. I’m now teaching English-language arts to seventh graders. With these canned comments, I now grade from 7:00-8:00 a.m. and I do a much better job interacting with my students throughout the writing process than when I was spending two hours per day hand-writing the same comments over and over again.

For those teachers interested in saving time and doing a more thorough job of essay response and grading, download The Pennington Manual of Style. This style manual serves as a wonderful writer’s reference guide with all of the writing tips from the author’s three comprehensive writing curricula: Teaching Grammar and Mechanics, Teaching Essay Strategies, and Teaching Spelling and Vocabulary. 

Constantly updated, The Pennington Manual of Style has been designed to serve as a complete writer’s reference guide (not merely a guide to citation formatting) for fourth-twelfth grade students and their teachers… with one major improvement over the old Warriner’s English Grammar and Composition and The Elements of Style: This style manual is fully interactive with 438 downloadable essay e-comments to make essay response efficient and comprehensive. Teachers can SAVE TIME GRADING ESSAYS AND GIVE STUDENTS BETTER COMMENTS with this resource. Plus, teachers are licensed to print The Pennington Manual of Style for each of their students and post this helpful resource on their own class websites. 

For students, The Pennington Manual of Style provides all the easy-to-understand writing tips to help developing writers learn what is good writing and why it is good writing. Students also learn what is wrong, why it is wrong, and how to fix errors. This 47-page manual is organized as follows: Essay Organization and Development (Introduction, Body, and Conclusion), Coherence, Word Choice, Sentence Variety, Writing Style, Format and Citations, Parts of Speech, Grammatical Forms, Usage, Sentence Structure, Types of Sentences, Mechanics, and Conventional Spelling Rules.

For teachers, this guide provides a common language of writing instruction and discourse to use when students submit paper or online essays. A download link inserts the entire 438 essay e-comments bank from The Pennington Manual of Style into the Autocorrect function of Microsoft Word® 2003, 2007, and 2010 (Windows XP, Vista, and Win 7 all work fine). Teachers simply select an essay e-comment, type in its short alphanumeric code, then click to insert it into a document for printing, into an e-mail, or into a Microsoft Word® comment bubble for an online essay. These essay e-comments not only identify errors; they explain how to revise the writing with clear definitions, explanations, and examples. It’s easy to add in personalized comments, even audio comments. Teachers will save time, yet do a more thorough job of essay response. Find out much more about e-grading here.

The essay e-comments have been derived from the author’s comprehensive curricula: Teaching Essay Strategies, Teaching Spelling and Vocabulary, Teaching Grammar and Mechanics, and Teaching Reading Strategies. Each curriculum uses the same language of instruction as does The Pennington Manual of Style. Each curriculum provides diagnostic assessments to determine the individual needs of students in writing, spelling, grammar, mechanics, and reading. Each curriculum provides targeted worksheets (all with formative assessments) and activities to enable the teacher to differentiate instruction according to the diagnostic data. Each curriculum has been designed to teach the writing, language, and reading strands of the Common Core State Standards.

Additionally, frustration mounts as the teacher has to write the same comments over and over again throughout a stack of student papers. Only to be exacerbated when, after receiving their graded essays, students simply glance at their final grades before cramming the essay into the bottom of their backpacks. There has got to be a better way…

Why Using Essay e-Comments Makes Sense

1. Having students submit their essays on the computer enhances the interactive writing process and the social context of writing by facilitating reader response and writer revision.

2. Submitting essays electronically is environmentally responsible, saves money, and provides an automatic portfolio of student work. Submission options are numerous: Google Docs®, Turnitin®, Moodle Docs®, Viper®, Screencast®, a school network dropbox, or e-mail.

3. The essay e-comments provide a common language of writing instruction and discourse for teachers and students.

4. Teachers can respond to and/or evaluate essays in much less time than if graded manually. Using essay e-comments cuts grading time in half. If it takes 15 minutes to red-mark, write comments, and grade a five-paragraph essay, it will take only 7-10 minutes to insert comments and grade using essay e-comments. With a batch of 120 essays, this means a times-saving of six hours (120 x 10 minutes = 12 hours compared to 120 x 5 minutes = 6 hours).

5. Get the Essay e-Comments Bank of 438 entries included in The Pennington Manual of Style with comprehensive and prescriptive comments to respond to and/or evaluate student essays. The comments help developing writers learn what is correct and why it is correct. Furthermore, students learn what constitutes good writing and what does not. Unlike other e-grading programs, comments are not inserted automatically. The teacher decides how many and which comments to include in a student’s essay. The Essay e-Comments Quick Reference Guide organizes the comments into easy-to-find categories for quick comment selection.

*The Essay e-Comments loads into the Autocorrect function of Microsoft Word® 2003, 2007, and 2010. The same download works for XP, Vista, and Windows 7.

6. Teachers can add in their own personalized comments with text or audio files. It’s easy to personalize the e-comment by adding onto the comment bubble. You can also add on a quick audio file to serve as your comment summary. Unlike other e-grading programs, teachers can save their custom comments in the Microsoft Word® Autocorrects, alongside the essay e-comments. How to Add in e-Comments to Microsoft Word Autocorrects

7. Teachers appreciate not having to write the same comments on each essay. For repeated errors, teachers simply highlight the text.

8. Teachers can insert hyperlinks to suggest or require additional content or skill practice.

9. Teachers can require their students to address each comment by using Microsoft Word® “Track Changes.” Students then re-submit revisions and edits for peer and/or teacher review. Just like real professional writers do with their editors!

10. Using essay e-comments prior to the student’s final draft changes teacher response from mere summative assessment to a dynamic and interactive coaching experience. Not every student has the same instructional writing needs. Remedial worksheets, using the same language of instruction as the essay e-comments are included in the Teaching Essay Strategies, Teaching Grammar and Mechanics, Teaching Spelling and Vocabulary, and Teaching Reading Strategies curricula. Each worksheet includes a formative assessment for easy progress monitoring. Answers provided, of course!

Essay e-Comment Samples

Introduction Paragraphs

Thesis statement does not respond to writing prompt. Re-read the writing prompt and dissect according to the WHO (the audience and role of the writer), the WHAT (the context of the writing topic), the HOW (the resource text title and author), and the DO (the key writing direction word).

Body Paragraphs: Argument, Analysis, Types of Evidence

Add support evidence. More evidence is needed to adequately support the major detail. Add evidence in major detail or minor detail sentences such as Fact, Example, Statistic,Comparison, Quote from an Authority, Logic, Experience, or Counter-Argument/Refutation. FE SCALE CR

Red Herring Errors An unconnected reference distracts the reader from the argument. Example: Poverty is the most important problem; however, the world has always had poor people. Explanation: The second clause distracts the reader from the issue of poverty as the most important problem.

Coherence, Word Choice, Sentence Variety, and Writing Style

Revise: Too Many “to-be” Verbs Consider limiting use of is, am, are, was, were, be, being, been to one per paragraph. To replace “to be verbs” 1. Substitute a more active verb 2. Begin the sentence with another word from the sentence 3. Change one of the words in the sentence into a verb form.

Citations

MLA Works Cited (Print Encyclopedia) Pennington, Mark. “Works Cited.” Encyclopedia of Writing. 1st ed. 1. El Dorado Hills, CA: Pennington Publishing, 2010. Print. In-Text Citation: (Pennington 212-213)

Grammatical Forms

Gerund Phrases A gerund phrase is an ____ing verb, connected to related words, and is used as a noun. Examples: Driving a car has become a necessary skill these days.

Sentence Problems

Sentence Fragments A sentence fragment is only part of a complete sentence. To fix a sentence fragment, remove any subordinating conjunctions. Example: Although she found out where the boys were. Revision: She found out where the boys were.

Mechanics

Commas with Introductory Word(s) Use commas after introductory words, phrases, or clauses. Drop the comma if the sentence is very short and there is no necessary pause.Examples: First, listen to me. First of all, listen to me. After you first sit up, listen to me. Then I went home.

Spelling

The i before e Spelling Rule Usually spell i before e (believe), but spell e before i after a c (receive) and when the letters are pronounced as a long /a/ sound (neighbor). Exceptions to the i before e rule include the following: neither, either, weird, forfeit, caffeine, height, to name a few.

Find 42 essay strategy worksheets that use same language of instruction used in the 438 e-comments, 8 on-demand writing fluencies, 8 writing process essays (4 Common Core State Standard informative/explanatory and 4 Common Core State Standard persuasive), 64  sentence revision and 64 rhetorical stance “openers,” remedial writing lessons, writing posters, and editing resources to differentiate essay writing instruction in the comprehensive writing curriculum, Teaching Essay Strategies, at www.penningtonpublishing.com.

Writing instructors classify the types of essay comments as following: corrective, directive, and facilitative responses.

Corrective responses are copy edits. Using proofreading diacritical marks, abbreviations, or short phrases, teachers identify mistakes in syntax, usage, mechanics, and spelling. Some teachers simply mark errors; others provide more prescriptive comments as to what is wrong and why it is wrong, and how to correct the writing issue.

Directive responses deal with both form and content. With directive responses, the teacher gives specific direction to the writer. The goal is to provide expert advice to the writer. For example, “Your thesis does not respond to the writing prompt. Re-read the writing assignment and re-write your thesis statement to specifically address the writing task.” Generally, directive response is used with matters of structure and writing style.

Facilitative comments also deal with both form and content. Using the Socratic model, comments are worded as thought-provoking questions. The goal is to make the writer responsible for writing decision-making. For example, “Is there a different type of evidence that would help to prove your point?” Generally, facilitative response is used to respond to the content and/or argument of the essay.

Writing instructors classify the key components of writing discourse as following: Essay Organization and Development (Introduction, Body, and Conclusion), Coherence, Word Choice, Sentence Variety, Writing Style, Format and Citations, Parts of Speech, Grammatical Forms, Usage, Sentence Structure, Types of Sentences, Mechanics, and Conventional Spelling Rules.

Many teachers use these components in holistic or analytical rubrics and provide separate evaluation for each.

Closing comments are usually used to personalize the overall writing comments. Closing comments may summarize the essay comments, emphasize a positive or negative in the writing, refer to the writer’s progress, provide brief praise or encouragement, or assign the overall grade.

For those teachers interested in saving time and doing a more thorough job of essay response and grading, check out The Pennington Manual of Style. This 47-page  style manual serves as a wonderful writer’s reference guide with all of the writing tips from the author’s three comprehensive writing curricula: Teaching Grammar and Mechanics, Teaching Essay Strategies, and Teaching Spelling and Vocabulary. The style manual also includes a download of the 438 writing, grammar, mechanics, and spelling comments teachers use most often in essay response and grading. Placed in the Autocorrects function of Microsoft Word® 2003, 2007, and 2010 (XP, Vista, and Windows 7), teachers can access each comment with a simple mouse click to insert into online student essays or print/e-mail for paper submissions.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if teachers could type and save their commonly-used “canned” writing comments to automatically insert into student essays without all the bother of copying and pasting? What a time-saver this would be! It’s easily done and you have the tools you need right on your desktop or laptop in Microsoft Word®. Plus, you don’t have to be a computer programmer to get the job done.

But, most teachers still write comments on student papers… how would computer-based comments help? Simple. A personal response sheet with essay e-comments attached to the students’ drafts. Why not include the rubric with your feedback right on that response sheet?

For those teachers who have made the leap into the world of paperless response and grading, you probably are already inserting your bubble comments on students’ word documents. Wouldn’t it be great to access and insert your saved comments with a few mouse clicks?

Here’s How to Add Essay e-Comments to Your Computer

1. Type your essay e-comment in Microsoft Word®. Go ahead and format it just as you wish: color, boldface, italics, hyperlinks. The text can include up to 255 characters. Highlight the essay e-comment. Don’t copy it.

2a. For teachers using Microsoft Word® 2010, click File. Then click Options. Next click Proofing.

2b. For teachers using previous Microsoft Office® versions (before 2010), click File. Then click Word Options. Next click Proofing.

3. Now click AutoCorrect Options. This page is similar in all recent Microsoft Word® versions. The highlighted text will appear within the With: text box.

4. Enter an alpha-numerical code in the Replace: text box and click OK. For example, type e1 for “Needs more evidence.” Type e2 for ”Your thesis statement does not respond to the prompt.” And so on…

5. Your own essay e-comment is now permanently saved on your computer. I suggest that you save all of your additional e-comments in a Microsoft Word® document so that you can easily add these on to other computers.

But… before you begin typing in all of your comments. Wouldn’t it be great if a friendly English-language arts teacher already typed up all of the comments for you? Why re-invent the wheel? Of course, you can still add in your own comments, but why not access all 438 writing, grammar, mechanics, and spelling comments teachers use most often in essay response and grading? Placed in the Autocorrects function of Microsoft Word® 2003, 2007, and 2010 (XP, Vista, and Windows 7), teachers can access each comment with a simple mouse click to insert into online student essays or print/e-mail for paper submissions. Want to see a few examples of these essay e-comments?

I’ve put together a simple download link and included all of the comments in a style manual appropriately titled The Pennington Manual of Style. Why not? I’m Mark Pennington. Teachers may download, print for teacher and students, and post on class websites. The 438 essay e-comments have been lifted from my three comprehensive writing curricula: Teaching Grammar and Mechanics, Teaching Essay Strategies, and Teaching Spelling and Vocabulary.

Later, our school got networked and our computer teacher taught me how to create a simple dropbox where students could submit their essays. Now, going to the computer lab made sense! I started responding to student papers throughout the writing process via the dropbox. Back and forth with my brief comments such as “spelling error” or “needs support evidence” and their revisions… Good work, but time-consuming and highly inefficient. I found myself making many of the same comments over and over again, so I created a document with the most frequent comments to cut and paste into the bubble comments. I started expanding my response comments beyond what is wrong to why it is wrong (the rules). Students appreciated the longer comments. After all, commenting “spelling error” for recieve doesn’t help the student much, but commenting “spelling error-i before e, except after c, or sounding like /ay/ as in neighbor or weigh” does the trick and gets the receive revision.

At the same time, I picked up a part-time job (what teacher doesn’t have one?) as an editor for a local educational publisher. I learned all about another Microsoft Word® feature called Track Changes. I know; I’m a slow learner. Track Changes allows other writers to edit the author’s text (in different colors for different editors) without deleting the author’s original writing. I shared this discovery with my students. Of course, many of them already knew about Track Changes and had probably intentionally withheld this information from me. Sly devils! Now, I could hold students accountable for addressing the issues raised in my bubble comments and clearly see their revisions and edits in Track Changes. I also began facilitating peer response groups, using Track Changes. Yes, it’s true students will fight over which color text they get to use as peer response partners.

One day I started thinking about how the computer replaces some of my spelling mistakes as I type, but not others. How does that work? I found out about Microsoft Word® Autocorrects. Through trial and error, I learned how to put in my own short-cuts and get the full text of what I wanted to say automatically. Wow! Never to have to type out “Seventh Grade English-language Arts” again! That got me to thinking about all of my cut and paste writing comments.

I developed a simple alphanumeric code for each of my writing comments and figured out how to add them on to the Autocorrects function. Now I could just type in “e1″ and press ENTER to get the full text to appear in a bubble comment. I organized my growing list of e-comments, found out about the limitations of each comment (255 characters), and found out how to format the Autocorrect text to add boldface, italics, color, and hyperlinks. Now we were getting something very useful. I expanded the e-comments with concise definitions, explanations, and clear examples and wrote a Quick Reference Guide to include the alphanumeric insert codes and the 438 e-comments into these categories: Essay Organization and Development (Introduction, Body, and Conclusion), Coherence, Word Choice, Sentence Variety, Writing Style, Format and Citations, Parts of Speech, Grammatical Forms, Usage, Sentence Structure, Types of Sentences, Mechanics, and Conventional Spelling Rules. I also decided to put all of these e-comments into a style manual to share with my students on my class website. The Pennington Manual of Style allows us to share the same language of instruction and serves as a handy writer’s reference guide.

By then, the online community had caught on to the value of the social context of writing. Sites like Google Docs®, Turnitin®, Moodle Docs®, Viper®, and Screencast® made it easier for students to submit their writing outside of the computer lab, get peer response, and have me respond with my e-comments and grade from anywhere that has the Internet. The only problem was that the Autocorrects comments worked only on the one computer. I used a bunch of computers in the computer lab, at home… and now my colleagues wanted to use my e-comments. Who wouldn’t want them? After all, students loved them and they saved significant time “grading” essays. Plus, teachers could add on their own text to personalize my comments. Even teachers who did not grade on the computer found the value of using my e-comments (they don’t have to be inserted in bubble comments) and typing up their own writing response summaries, then printing and attaching these to paper submissions. Including the rubric on the printed response sheet makes sense, by the way.

But, it took hours to cut and paste the 438 e-comments into each computer. I whined about this once too often until my computer-savvy son found a way to insert the entire 438 e-comment bank into any computer with Microsoft Word® 2003, 2007, or 2010 (Windows XP, Vista, and Win 7 all work fine). He developed a simple download.

I would love to have every teacher get this download and use these 438 Essay e-Comments. I’ve placed the download instructions in my 47-page The Pennington Manual of Style and included the definitions, rules, examples, and writing hints found in my comprehensive curricula: Teaching Grammar and Mechanics, Teaching Essay Strategies, and Teaching Spelling and Vocabulary. Each program is aligned with the new Common Core State Standards writing and language strands.

Here are some examples of the 438 e-comments found in The Pennington Manual of Style

Introductory Paragraphs

Thesis statement does not respond to writing prompt. Re-read the writing prompt and dissect according to the WHO (the audience and role of the writer), the WHAT (the context of the writing topic), the HOW (the resource text title and author), and the DO (the key writing direction word).

Body Paragraphs: Argument, Analysis, Types of Evidence

Add support evidence. More evidence is needed to adequately support the major detail. Add evidence in major detail or minor detail sentences such as Fact, Example, Statistic, Comparison, Quote from an Authority, Logic, Experience, or Counter-Argument/Refutation. FE SCALE CR

Red Herring Errors An unconnected reference distracts the reader from the argument. Example: Poverty is the most important problem; however, the world has always had poor people. Explanation: The second clause distracts the reader from the issue of poverty as the most important problem.

Coherence, Word Choice, Sentence Variety, and Writing Style

Revise: Too Many “to-be” Verbs Consider limiting use of is, am, are, was, were, be, being, been to one per paragraph. To replace “to be verbs” 1. Substitute a more active verb 2. Begin the sentence with another word from the sentence 3. Change one of the words in the sentence into a verb form.

Citations

MLA Works Cited (Print Encyclopedia) Pennington, Mark. “Works Cited.” Encyclopedia of Writing. 1st ed. 1. El Dorado Hills, CA: Pennington Publishing, 2010. Print. In-Text Citation:(Pennington 212-213)

Grammatical Forms

Gerund Phrases A gerund phrase is an ____ing verb, connected to related words, and is used as a noun. Examples: Driving a car has become a necessary skill these days.

Sentence Problems

Sentence Fragments A sentence fragment is only part of a complete sentence. To fix a sentence fragment, remove any subordinating conjunctions. Example: Although she found out where the boys were. Revision: She found out where the boys were.

Mechanics

Commas with Introductory Word(s) Use commas after introductory words, phrases, or clauses. Drop the comma if the sentence is very short and there is no necessary pause. Examples: First, listen to me. First of all, listen to me. After you first sit up, listen to me. Then I went home.

Spelling

The i before e Spelling Rule Usually spell i before e (believe), but spell e before i after a c(receive) and when the letters are pronounced as a long /a/ sound (neighbor). Exceptions to the i before e rule include the following: neither, either, weird, forfeit, caffeine, height, to name a few.

It’s exhausting and time-consuming. So, naturally, teachers look for short-cuts that will save energy and time, but ones which will still give students what they need as developing writers. Enter spell checker and grammar checker software. Whereas spelling checkers, either as a stand-alone software or as a tool embedded in word processing programs such as Microsoft Word®, do a reasonable job of finding spelling errors (other than troublesome homonyms), grammar checkers simply cannot replicate that effectiveness. But there are some helpful resources to lighten the teacher’s load…

Wikipedia has a nice article, Grammar Checker, which explains the programming limitations of grammar checkers, but suffice it to say for non-techies: grammar checking software is a whole lot harder to program than is spelling. My take is that we should encourage students to spell check and revise accordingly, but skip the grammar check and proofread instead. Geoffrey K. Pullum, Professor of General Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh, agrees with greater reservations:

“For the most part, accepting the advice of a computer grammar checker on your prose will make it much worse, sometimes hilariously incoherent. If you want an amusing way to whiling away a rainy afternoon, take a piece of literary prose you consider sublimely masterful and run the Microsoft Word™ grammar checker on it, accepting all the suggested changes.” (Monkeys Will Check Your Grammar, 2007)

The popular website Top Ten Reviews does a nice job reviewing the four most popular grammar checkers, although their top choice, Grammarly, did happen to advertise rather prominently on their site. In the review site’s testing, Grammarly caught 10 of 14 “grammar” errors. Now, to put on my English teacher’s hat, these were not all grammatical errors, but I nitpick. Of course, I had to try my own writing submission with the Grammarly software:

To pee, or to pee not: that is not the question. When in the path of alien invasions, it becomes necessary for the rights of the governed to outweigh the rights of the graham crackers, it is the right of the fig newton to abolish that nonsense speak.

The results? I could break down all of the issues, but you get the idea.

So, are there any computer short-cuts for essay response and grading that do help the conscientious teacher in providing quality essay response throughout the writing process? Yes there are, but these must remain where they belong: in the control of the teacher. At present, computer-scored essays remain a pipe dream.

However, a comfortable balance can be struck between technological efficiency and teacher judgment. Using the computer to grade paper and online essays can achieve both purposes. For those teachers interested in saving time and doing a more thorough job of essay response and grading, check out The Pennington Manual of Style. This 47-page style manual serves as a wonderful writer’s reference guide with all of the writing tips from the author’s three comprehensive writing curricula: Teaching Grammar and Mechanics, Teaching Essay Strategies, and Teaching Spelling and Vocabulary. The style manual also includes a download of the 438 writing, grammar, mechanics, and spelling comments teachers use most often in essay response and grading. Placed in the Autocorrects function of Microsoft Word® 2003, 2007, and 2010 (XP, Vista, and Windows 7), teachers can access each comment with a simple mouse click to insert into online student essays or print/e-mail for paper submissions.

“Essays are considered by many researchers as the most useful tool to assess learning outcomes, implying the ability to recall, organize and integrate ideas, the ability to express oneself in writing and the ability to supply merely than identify interpretation and application of data. It is in the measurement of such outcomes, corresponding to the evaluation and synthesis levels of the Bloom’s (1956) taxonomy that the essay questions serve their most useful purpose.” (Valenti, Nitko and Cucchiarelli 2003)

However, essays are rather subjective vehicles of expression. Even the best attempts to develop objective evaluation criteria with analytical rubrics and check-lists fall short of unbiased objectivity. Yet, this shortcoming has not eliminated the cherished role of the essay in the British and American educational establishments.

There’s just one problem. Essays just take too much time to read, respond to, and evaluate. A conscientious teacher may realistically spend an hour per student essay if that teacher responds to multiple student drafts in the context of the writing process evaluates the final published essay.

Of course, teachers can spend less time, if they use simplistic holistic rubrics or buy-in to the convenient notion that making comments on a student’s essay somehow disenfranchises the autonomy of the writer. However, most teachers recognize that interactive dialogue between student and teacher on the student’s essay is unavoidably essential. And it does take time.

Enter the age of computers. Word processing, spell check, grammar check, word count, reading level, data bases, etc. Is there a savior?

Computer-scoring of student writing is being actively marketed to K-12 schools and universities. Multinational corporations, such as Educational Testing Services (ETS), claim that current technology is able not only to provide objective assessment, but is now also able to give accurate and useful feedback to the student writer. Criterion, a machine-reading service marketed by ETS, has become widely popular in both American K-12 schools and universities. Other similar automatic grading programs are open for business.

Both of the new assessment consortia that have been delegated the tasks of developing national assessments for the Common Core State Standards (now adopted by 43 states) have indicated that they are actively considering machine-scored essay software. “Automated assessment systems would provide consistency in essay scoring, while enormous cost and time savings could occur if the AES system is shown to grade essays within the range of those awarded by human assessors,” suggest the aforementioned researchers.

But, what to teachers say about computer-scored essays?

The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) summarizes its position on machine-scored writing:

We oppose the use of machine-scored writing in the assessment of writing.  Automated assessment programs do not respond as human readers.  While they may promise consistency, they distort the very nature of writing as a complex and context-rich interaction between people.  They simplify writing in ways that can mislead writers to focus more on structure and grammar than on what they are saying by using a given structure and style.

“Writing Assessment: A Position Statement.” NCTE.org. Nov 2006

The Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) summarizes its position on machine-scored writing:

“We oppose the use of machine-scored writing in the assessment of writing.” Automated assessment programs do not respond as human readers. While they may promise consistency, they distort the very nature of writing as a complex and context-rich interaction between people. They simplify writing in ways that can mislead writers to focus more on structure and grammar than on what they are saying by using a given structure and style… We believe ourselves that machine-scoring fundamentally alters the social and rhetorical nature of writing—that writing to a machine is not writing at all.”

The CCCC Position Statement on Teaching, Learning, and Assessing Writing in Digital Environments

But, is there a middle ground? Can teachers use technology to save time and doing a more thorough job of responding to student essays? Can teachers maintain autonomy in the evaluation process and exercise their own judgment about which comments need to be made, which grammatical errors need to be marked, and which grade needs to be assigned?

Perhaps so. There can be a balance between technological efficiency and teacher judgment. Using the computer to grade paper and online essays can achieve both purposes. For those teachers interested in saving time and doing a more thorough job of essay response and grading, check out The Pennington Manual of Style. This style manual serves as a wonderful writer’s reference guide with all of the writing tips from the author’s three comprehensive writing curricula: Teaching Grammar and Mechanics, Teaching Essay Strategies, and Teaching Spelling and Vocabulary. The style manual also includes a download of the 438 writing, grammar, mechanics, and spelling comments teachers use most often in essay response and grading. Placed in the Autocorrects function of Microsoft Word® 2003, 2007, and 2010 (XP, Vista, and Windows 7), teachers can access each comment with a simple mouse click to insert into online student essays or print/e-mail for paper submissions. And best of all… the 47-page style manual with the essay e-comments bank costs only a nickel.

Following are articles, free resources, and teaching tips regarding how to teach essay strategies from the Pennington Publishing Blog. Bookmark and visit us often. Oh, and don’t forget to copy down the 10% discount code found only on this blog to purchase the quality curricula and resources offered by Pennington Publishing.

How to Add Essay e-Comments to Your Computer

http://penningtonpublishing.com/blog/writing/how-to-add-essay-e-comments-to-your-computer/

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if teachers could type and save their commonly-used “canned” writing comments to automatically insert into student essays without all the bother of copying and pasting? What a time-saver this would be! It’s easily done and you have the tools you need right on your desktop or laptop in Microsoft Word®. Plus, you don’t have to be a computer programmer to get the job done.

Writing Guides, English Handbooks, and Style Manuals

http://penningtonpublishing.com/blog/grammar_mechanics/writers-guides-english-handbooks-and-style-manuals/

Remember using Warriner’s English Grammar and Composition back in high school and Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style back in college? Many students found these resources to be indispensable writing partners for essays and term papers. Writing Guides, English Handbooks, and Style Manuals all provide useful tools to students and professional writers alike. However, print copies are often out of date as soon as they are published. With commonly accepted guidelines in flux, the resources of the web are much better suited to the needs of today’s writers.

Constantly updated, The Pennington Manual of Style has been designed to serve as a writer’s reference guide for fourth-twelfth grade students and their teachers… with one major improvement over the old Warriner’s English Grammar and Composition and The Elements of Style: This style manual is fully interactive with 438 downloadable essay e-comments to make essay response efficient and comprehensive.

How to Write Effective Essay Comments

http://penningtonpublishing.com/blog/writing/how-to-write-effective-essay-comments/

Conscientious teachers know that merely completing a holistic rubric and totaling the score for a grade is not effective essay response or writing assessment. Teachers may choose to grade and/or respond with essay comments after the rough draft and/or after the final draft. Using the types of comments that match the teacher’s instructional objectives is essential. Additionally, keeping in mind the key components of written discourse can balance responses between form and content. Finally, most writing instructors include closing comments to emphasize and summarize their responses. Here’s how to write truly effective essay comments.

How to Use the Computer to Grade Essays

http://penningtonpublishing.com/blog/grammar_mechanics/using-computers-to-grade-essays/

Thought I’d share how I started using computers to grade essays and offer fellow teachers a great resource to provide better essay response and cut grading time by half. Years ago I played around with the Insert Comments feature of Microsoft Word® and learned how to put in and format the bubble comments. But, it took hours to cut and paste the comments into each computer. I whined about this once too often until my computer-savvy son found a way to insert my entire 438 e-comment bank into any computer with Microsoft Word® 2003, 2007, or 2010 (Windows XP, Vista, and Win 7 all work fine). He developed a simple download. I would love to have every teacher get this download and use these 438 Essay e-Comments.

Why Using Essay e-Comments Makes Sense

http://penningtonpublishing.com/blog/grammar_mechanics/why-using-essay-e-comments-makes-sense/

We have computers. Let’s use them! Using the computer to store and insert often-used essay comments is efficient, saves time, and just does a better overall job of essay response and grading. Moving beyond writing comments, we can also insert hyperlinks to suggest content revision. Why not insert audio files to summarize comments? Plus, the social context of computers enhances peer revision. This article helps teachers problem-solve how to manage an interactive teacher-student writing experience using both home and school computers.

Essay Comment Excuses

http://penningtonpublishing.com/blog/grammar_mechanics/essay-comment-excuses/

Teachers know that detailed essay comments are keys to effective writing instruction but are adept at creating essay comment excuses to avoid the time and energy it takes to do the job. But, how can we do a great job with essay response and still maintain some semblance of a life outside of work? Canned comments. Ones to cut and paste from your computer. But… really good ones.

Grammar Checkers for Teachers

http://penningtonpublishing.com/blog/grammar_mechanics/grammar-checkers-for-teachers/

Conscientious teachers still mark up and comment grammar and usage issues on student essays, but it’s exhausting and time-consuming. So, naturally, teachers look for short-cuts that will save energy and time, but ones which will still give students what they need as developing writers. Enter spell checker and grammar checker software. Whereas spelling checkers, either as a stand-alone software or as a tool embedded in word processing programs such as Microsoft Word®, do a reasonable job of finding spelling errors (other than troublesome homonyms), grammar checkers simply cannot replicate that effectiveness. But there are some helpful resources to lighten the teacher’s load…