"How do you assess my writing?"

I have to admit that writing assessment is not actually my cup of tea (for now). It's not that I am not interested in the issue; however, I have not had any chances to work on any projects with assessment framework in mind. This week's readings are interesting and mainly discuss the issue of peer response and placement writing. Let's hear some personal stories regarding how I assess students' writings.

Junior hi-school students in Creative Writing Course:
When I taught high school students a creative writing course, students always (read ALWAYS) came up to me and asked about how I graded their writings. Their writing assignments were poems, short stories, comic strips, and a newspaper as a group project (editorial, news articles, movie reviews, etc.). What I did in assessing their writings was to create a rubric with them. I asked students, "If you want to assess one's writings, what criteria would you use?" Since I had more freedom to teach this course, it was appropriate for my students and I to come up with the grading criteria.

Senior year, English major in Research Writing Course:
I also had a chance to teach a Research Writing course for a college in Bangkok, Thailand. Students were asked to do peer response with multiple drafts. Since students were trained to do peer response, I did not have to spend much time explaining and modeling the response process. However, I still need to come up with assessment criteria for their research papers, which they came up with their research topics (15 pages excluding references). I came up with grading criteria as followed: Format, organization, grammar, content. You might be wonder how I came up with this criteria; I used my own past experience when I was graded for my paper in college as well.

As an undergraduate student, I was trained to do multiple drafts and peer reviews. I was not my friend's favorite because I usually gave my friend's so many comments that they did not enjoy revising at all. I gave respond to both global and local concerns. I sometimes underlined awkward or confusing sentences with some suggestions for future revisions.

Peer response has gained its attention and popularity over the last decade. The most important issue in using this approach is the trust between students. Teachers need to make sure that students will not perceive that teachers will be the only person who will read and grade their papers. We educators need to make sure that we incorporate students' peer responses into account so that students will take the peer response responsibly. Some students might think that critiquing others' works is not appropriate. I think if we explain to students the purpose of doing this activity, it might help students to be more aware of the activity. Teachers need to model the process as well so that teachers and students will be on the same page.