Minimal Marking A technique for Responding to Student Writing and Teaching Grammar and Editing Lennie Irvin, San Antonio College

Minimal Marking, SAWP Feb Conference | Lennie Irvin, San Antonio College My Teaching Background Community College English teacher since 1989 Assistant Professor of English at San Antonio College where I’ve been since 1994 Current PhD student in Technical Communication and Rhetoric at Texas Tech University, with an emphasis in Comp/Rhet Co-Director, San Antonio Writing Project (Summer Institute 2004) Special interests: writing pedagogy, rhetoric, computers and writing, the role of reflection in the activity of writing, write to learn

Minimal Marking, SAWP Feb Conference | Lennie Irvin, San Antonio College My Teaching Context I teach Freshman Composition, Basic English II (online), and occasionally Technical Writing and Sophomore Literature Most of my writing classes are conducted 100% in the computer classroom My students often are first generation students in college and have poor literacy skills. A significant number are minority students who might be considered “non-traditional. Nearly 100% of my students are struggling to balance work and school.

Minimal Marking, SAWP Feb Conference | Lennie Irvin, San Antonio College My Teaching Philosophy  Everything I do as a teacher revolves around the learning and growth of my students. I believe in creating a learning environment where students feel safe and respected.  I also believe my students will learn potentially as much from each other as they do from me. I set up my classroom as a learning community where we share and discuss our writing, our experiences writing, and our views of what we are learning. We are constantly posting, reading, and responding to our writing.  I believe we learn best by doing, so I try to keep my talking to a minimum, seeking to be strategic in my guidance and direction. Learning by doing in a writing class means that we do a lot of writing.  I believe that writing is fundamentally a meaning-making activity.

Minimal Marking, SAWP Feb Conference | Lennie Irvin, San Antonio College Some of my thoughts on grammar When considering writing, what should we look for? (from Peter Elbow) Has the writer achieved his or her desired effect upon the intended audience? Is it true? Is it correct? Research has shown that grammar drills in isolation actually make students’ writing proficiency worse. I believe grammar must be worked on in the context of the student’s own writing.

Minimal Marking, SAWP Feb Conference | Lennie Irvin, San Antonio College Some of Robert Connor’s thoughts on grammar from “The Rhetoric of Mechanical Correctness.” Selected Essays of Robert Connors. “The enforcement of standards of mechanical correctness is not a tradition that can—or should—die out of composition instruction. Mechanical errors, as Mina Shaughnessy says, are “unprofitable intrusions upon the consciousness of the reader” which “demand energy without giving any return in meaning” and helping students overcome their own unintentional sabotage of the process of communicating their thoughts is certainly an important part of our work. But it is not all of our work. Striking a balance between formal and rhetorical considerations is the problem we now face, and it is a delicate one.” (95)

Minimal Marking, SAWP Feb Conference | Lennie Irvin, San Antonio College Minimal Marking: Why Use It? Richard Haswell in his 1983 article in College English reviews a number of reasons for using minimal marking… the time and labor it takes to mark many essays studies have shown that the effect on students or their writing from our markings is minimal (all that effort for little reward) our marks if too directive deny students “rights to their own text” (we de-author, delegitimize students engagement with their own writing) rather than “fixing” errors for them, we want students to think and learn for themselves and attempt to work on grammar within the context of their own writing (be facilitative rather than directive).

Minimal Marking, SAWP Feb Conference | Lennie Irvin, San Antonio College Minimal Marking: What Is It? it is a technique for marking surface errors in essays all surface errors within the text are left unmarked each mistake is indicated with a check in the margin; a line with two checks means the presence of two errors in that line essays with minimal marks are returned to students who then correct these errors themselves, returning them to the teacher for review Haswell doesn’t give a grade on the essay until checks have been corrected; I provide a separate editing grade.

Minimal Marking, SAWP Feb Conference | Lennie Irvin, San Antonio College In Class Practice Review Punctuation and Sentence Structure handout (previous familiarity possible)Punctuation and Sentence Structure Return essays with minimal marks Allow minutes editing time Students return the essay to me Review them and return them next class

Minimal Marking, SAWP Feb Conference | Lennie Irvin, San Antonio College Try it out yourself!

Minimal Marking, SAWP Feb Conference | Lennie Irvin, San Antonio College Results Haswell found students were able to correct 61% of their own errors My own “action research” into this technique with my students shows students were able to correct 54 % of their own errors

Minimal Marking, SAWP Feb Conference | Lennie Irvin, San Antonio College How might you use this in your classroom?

Minimal Marking, SAWP Feb Conference | Lennie Irvin, San Antonio College Works Cited plus brief bibliography Berthoff, Ann. The Making of Meaning: Metaphors Models, and Maxims for Writing Teachers. Upper Montclaire: Boynton/Cook: Connors, Robert. "The Rhetoric of Mechanical Correctness." Selected Essays of Robert Conners. Eds. Lisa Ede and Andrea Lundsford. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, Elbow, Peter. Writing with Power. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, Graham, Steve and Dolores Perin. Writing Next: Effective Strategies to Improve Writing of Adolescents in Middle and High School. A Report to Carnegie Corporation of New York. Alliance for Excellent Education, Haswell, Richard. "Minimal Marking." College English (1983): Hillocks, George. Research on Written Composition. New York: Wiley, 1986.

Minimal Marking, SAWP Feb Conference | Lennie Irvin, San Antonio College