Journal requirement: Complete the journal entry to Hesse and share your knowledge of the difference between grading and responding and the five dimensions of response that he describes. The goal is for you to fully understand the purpose of Hesse's article, so feel free to refer to his article in your writing. Provide your response to the questions below: 1. What's the difference between "grading" and "responding?" 2. What does Hesse identify as the "top considerations" when an instructor responds to writing? 3. Hesse speaks to the importance of a piece of writing achieving its assigned purpose. For an academic assignment, how would you know whether a piece of writing is achieving its purpose or not? For a non-academic assignment, how would you know whether a piece of writing is achieving its purpose or not? 4. How does reading Hesse's article change your perceptions of what it means to produce "good" writing? Or. . . How does it not change your perceptions? Grading writing: The art and science — and why computers can’t do it By Valerie Strauss May 2, 2013 A new debate about whether computers can really edit essay tests is really about how writing can best be graded. Here to delve into that issue is Doug Hesse, professor and executive director of writing at The University of Denver.  He is co-author (with Lynn Troyka) of “The Simon and Schuster Handbook for Writers” and of “Creating Nonfiction” (with Becky Bradway).  He is also a past chair of the Conference on College Composition and Communication and a past president of the Council of Writing Program Administrators. By Doug Hesse Here’s a modest multiple-choice quiz: 1.  Which writing is better? A.  See Dick run!  Run, Dick, run! B.  Dick’s running merits attention and encouragement. 2.  Which writing is better? A.  On September 11, 2001, planes destroyed the World Trade Center in New York. B.  On September 11, 2001, America lost considerably more than buildings and lives. 3.  Which writing is better? A.  George Washingtons ownership of 277slaves shows how hard it is to apply laws from centuries ago.  To a society with quite diffrent values and circumstances. [sic] B.  Ronald Reagan’s membership in the Communist party throughout his presidency had surprisingly little effect on his popularity or effectiveness. [sic] I’ll explain the “right” answers below, though I hope you see what makes the quiz tricky, as it enacts complexities that writing teachers face daily.  The past few weeks brought yet another declaration of a computer program able to grade writing.  More recently, the National Council of Teachers of English published a research-based explanation of why machine scoring falls short.  How computers grade (most successfully only with short, well-circumscribed tasks) is well-documented, and I’ve written a short analysis of their aspirations and shortcomings. But what goes into professional writing teachers’ responses to student writing?  Notice that I’ve chosen the term “resp ...

1. Journal requirement:
Complete the journal entry to Hesse and share your knowledge
of the difference between grading and responding and the five
dimensions of response that he describes.
The goal is for you to fully understand the purpose of Hesse's
article, so feel free to refer to his article in your writing.
Provide your response to the questions below:
1. What's the difference between "grading" and "responding?"
2. What does Hesse identify as the "top considerations" when an
instructor responds to writing?
3. Hesse speaks to the importance of a piece of writing
achieving its assigned purpose. For an academic assignment,
how would you know whether a piece of writing is achieving its
purpose or not? For a non-academic assignment, how would you
know whether a piece of writing is achieving its purpose or not?
4. How does reading Hesse's article change your perceptions of
what it means to produce "good" writing? Or. . . How does it
not change your perceptions?
Grading writing: The art and science — and why computers
can’t do it
By Valerie Strauss May 2, 2013
A new debate about whether computers can really edit essay
tests is really about how writing can best be graded. Here to
delve into that issue is Doug Hesse, professor and executive

2. director of writing at The University of Denver. He is co-
author (with Lynn Troyka) of “The Simon and Schuster
Handbook for Writers” and of “Creating Nonfiction” (with
Becky Bradway). He is also a past chair of the Conference on
College Composition and Communication and a past president
of the Council of Writing Program Administrators.
By Doug Hesse
Here’s a modest multiple-choice quiz:
1. Which writing is better?
A. See Dick run! Run, Dick, run!
B. Dick’s running merits attention and encouragement.
2. Which writing is better?
A. On September 11, 2001, planes destroyed the World Trade
Center in New York.
B. On September 11, 2001, America lost considerably more
than buildings and lives.
3. Which writing is better?
A. George Washingtons ownership of 277slaves shows how
hard it is to apply laws from centuries ago. To a society with
quite diffrent values and circumstances. [sic]
B. Ronald Reagan’s membership in the Communist party
throughout his presidency had surprisingly little effect on his
popularity or effectiveness. [sic]
I’ll explain the “right” answers below, though I hope you see
what makes the quiz tricky, as it enacts complexities that
writing teachers face daily. The past few weeks brought yet
another declaration of a computer program able to grade
writing. More recently, the National Council of Teachers of
English published a research-based explanation of why machine
scoring falls short. How computers grade (most successfully
only with short, well-circumscribed tasks) is well-documented,
and I’ve written a short analysis of their aspirations and
shortcomings.
But what goes into professional writing teachers’ responses to
student writing? Notice that I’ve chosen the term “respond,”

3. which certainly includes grading: how good is this text on some
scale of measure? “Respond” is a bigger term, though: what
ideas and reactions does this writing create? How might its
author improve similar writing in the future? It’s one thing to
say whether your writing is any good; it’s quite another to
explain to you helpfully why.
Any piece of writing is good or bad within at least five
dimensions:
*how well it fits a given readership or audience;
*how well it achieves a given purpose;
*how much ambition it displays;
*how well it conforms to matters of fact and reasoning; and
*how well it matches formal conventions expected by its
audience.
These dimensions intersect, and teachers have to solve a cat’s
cradle of their interactions to discern quality.
The top considerations are audience and purpose. Consider my
quizzes’ first question. If the audience is six year olds and the
purpose is to foster first reading skills, “See Dick run!” is better
by far (though perhaps less than inspiring). The second
sentence, “Dick’s running merits attention and encouragement,”
has more advanced vocabulary, but it would pretty much baffle
those first graders. That said, I can imagine readers and
situations for which this stodgy sentence would work.
Audiences vary widely by expertise, expectations, needs,
circumstances, beliefs, and relationships to the reader. An e-
mail I send my wife about a concert we saw last night will
differ considerably in form, style, and assumptions from a
review I write for The Washington Post. Both will contrast
with a note I post on the band’s fan website. A teacher has to
stand as a proxy reader, then, for any piece of writing, judging
whether the writer has included too much information or too
little, has used the right tone, has dealt with objections, and so
on.
Teachers also have to judge whether pieces achieve their

4. assigned purpose. Is the task to explain? To analyze, interpret,
or synthesize? To change minds, to stir action, or to have
readers credit conflicting viewpoints? To entertain? To
demonstrate knowledge, as in a test? To express thoughts,
attitudes, or beliefs? To sustain a relationship? All are valid
reasons for writing, and a piece that’s successful for one
purpose might fail for another.
Question 2 in my quiz illustrates the difference. Choice A is a
statement of fact; if the writing’s purpose is objectively to
describe what happened on 9/11, A is the better answer.
However, if the purpose is to argue an interpretation of 9/11,
Choice B (“America lost considerably more than buildings or
lives”) is preferable. B asserts something open to debate or
needing demonstration—of course with explanation and proof.
JavaScript Only <a target="_blank"
href="https://adclick.g.doubleclick.net/pcs/click?xai=AKAOjssi
QYv0FmFTVMy4wP9g_R475mPBVNrfoyrrtUU5vOJnXQK2Ax
_CG5Y9EQFAoryzAE5AfLnUZg-
LoXUrUzDJ7JMD3S9gbDGjWZvTIdhFIls1-
3XZgFB5__Xmd_4sLxp00ZsbPcBoOXTCVeawZTM8ox9TAk82
Z6uOQ4EYzmrWTkTCVUskcRddKYS448fRJVQj0oU70FahF4g
0uuMcEIWgYR1ohCy_JvBO7Bv_J_GHq_A4QDZhLLN68qAm8
JwgoscJf_yLRGs&sig=Cg0ArKJSzC_u5Yx84TfUEAE&urlfix=1
&adurl=https://adfarm.mediaplex.com/ad/nc/29005-229525-
2151-1?mpt=945893738"> <img
src="https://adfarm.mediaplex.com/ad/nb/29005-229525-2151-
1?mpt=945893738" alt="Click Here" border="0"> </a>
Furthermore, 3.B likely gets credit for more ambition or
insight. This is a relative quality. Some papers are adequate
but safe, like a straight dive with a 1.0 degree of difficulty.
Other papers take risks, like an inward two-and-a-half, with a
twist, a 2.7 dive. Of course, a student trying the latter might
flop, but teachers might understandably reward a credible
attempt as much as they do a flawless 1.0 dive. It takes
discernment to make that call.
My third quiz question offers a version of the form versus

5. content dilemma. Choice 3A has a few traditional errors: a
missing apostrophe, a misspelled word, a sentence fragment.
Choice 3B’s punctuation and spelling are fine, but there’s the
glaring wrongness of Mr. Reagan’s supposed politics. Both
choices might well trouble readers (as they do me), but the error
of fact is more consequential. Not only will smart readers
question the reliability of author 3B, but perhaps worse, naïve
readers may accept as facts things that aren’t. Heaven knows
it’s easy to make claims with invented or missing evidence, as
some political partisanship sadly shows.
No writing teacher can be a walking encyclopedia, but all must
have a flexible broad knowledge and a keen ear for things
missing or ringing not quite true. They ask whether claims have
evidence and whether reasoning is sound, then suggest ways to
improve.
Of course, teachers must also judge how students handle
conventions: matters of grammar, usage, punctuation, spelling,
citation, formatting, and so on. I list these features last, when
many people assume they most occupy English teachers, but of
course they’re vital. My point is that so are the other
dimensions. The art of grading requires judging how all five
together describe a student’s performance.
Answer Sheet newsletter
Education questions and answers, in your inbox weekly.
Sign up
A famous article by University of Chicago writing professor
Joseph Williams demonstrates the complexity. “The
Phenomenology of Error,” published in the scholarly journal
College Composition and Communication, explained that
readers tend to notice errors much less when the writer is
trustworthy or when an essay’s ideas, logic, and style are
strong. Williams craftily embedded a hundred errors into his
article, which the journal’s editor preserved and printed. As
Williams predicted, almost no one reading the piece recognized
the errors—or at least many of them—because the piece was so
compelling in other dimensions.

6. You might wonder about qualities I’ve seemed to neglect, things
like clarity, organization and structure, style, voice,
conciseness, and so on. Of course these matter; in fact, they’re
constituents of the five categories. “Clarity,” for example, is
largely a function of audience; novice readers, for example,
need explanations of basic terms to a degree that would bore
experts. A longer discussion of grading would factor additional
writing elements and how they inform decisions. For now, I’ll
simply point out the long list of elements that teachers must
consider.
You might wonder, too, about how these dimensions apply to
both youthful and collegiate writing. What does “ambition”
look like for fifth graders? The demands of writing change as
students progress from grade school through college. Informed
by experience and research, teachers devise tasks to stretch
writers’ cognitive and social development. They translate
grading considerations to fit the assignments they’ve made and
the students they teach.
Despite all this complexity, grading per se is reasonably easy
for experienced teachers. They can confidently, even quickly,
judge whether a given paper is an A or C. If simply recording
marks in databases were the end of it, no problem. But, of
course, that’s not the end. For grades to be meaningful and
useful to students, they require some explanation, perhaps
suggestions or direction. Now, this response needn’t
necessarily be extensive–nor can it be, given most teachers’
course loads.
However, writing is a fundamental human act. We write for
each other, in various guises for various reasons, and teachers
have the important responsibility to help students do it well.
This means maintaining high standards, but it also means acting
as a trusted reader and coach. Responding to writing requires
not only a sense of good writing, but also a sense of individual
students, their interests, abilities, needs, and trajectories. The

7. real art of grading blends communicating not only a student’s
achievement—however good or wanting—but also his or her
potential, with a map of how to get from one to the other and
encouragement to make the trip.