Marking in EL (Clarence Lee)

My marking experience in EL could be split into two categories: comprehension exercises and essays.

Comprehension exercises were easier to mark as we practiced peer marking in the classroom. I explained every answer to them to ensure that they understood why the answer was what it was. I nevertheless asked the students to submit their comprehension exercises to me so that I could check their corrections and mark the summary exercises.

Essays were much more difficult to mark by their very nature. Not only are they longer but marking is much more subjective. It did not help that the rubric for marking essays at the O-levels is vague and leaves plenty of room for the marker’s interpretation, which can be a good or bad thing. As I was only marking essays from one class and it was not formal assessment, this was not an issue and benchmarking was not practiced.

I told students that I would be grading them according to a sec 4 standard. The CT had long begun preparing the class for the rigours of the O-levels. Although the numerical grades were marked according to the O-level marking rubric, I wrote plenty of comments in the margins and praised them for their efforts. I pointed out the students’ strengths and weaknesses and the bulk of the comments focused on praising the good parts of their essays. For example, a student might score 14/30, but I would praise him for his logical use of plot structure.

Perhaps the biggest controversy in marking essays is whether to mark for what was taught in the lesson or to mark for grammar and other elements of writing as well. Although marking for what was taught in the lesson would have been much easier, my CT believed in marking every single grammatical error in the text and I followed this pedagogy and adhered to a consistent set of demands for the class. Nevertheless, my comments focused on what was taught in the lesson and praised them if they had achieved it. Although their scripts would be covered in green ink, I tried to mitigate the sting of this with praise for their efforts written in the margins.