Evaluating Errors
One of the challenges for teachers of composition is
deciding how serious an error is. How serious we judge an error to be
affects both grading and teaching. We tend to focus a great deal more
on serious errors than those we know are minor oversights. This guide
is an attempt to “rank” errors as they might be judged in a first-year
college composition course. It is only a model and not a definitive guideline
for marking student papers.
Using Error “Severity” Levels
There are an infinite number of ways to evaluate student
papers. Some instructors use points to indicate how they value specific
outcomes, while others give overall grades without rigid “rubric” checklists.
Personally, I use a mix of the two, and rubrics change throughout the
academic semester to give an increasing weight to critical thinking and
reasoning skills. Early papers are used to address issues of grammar,
mechanics, and form. The breakdown of errors offered here is also distributed
to students as a reminder of things to check when proofreading a paper.
Level 4: Minor Mistakes
Minor mistakes are those errors associated with carelessness
or rushing. They are also the errors that slip by when proofreading.
We all make these mistakes. Some of us have error patterns at this level.
I often miss keys when typing quickly, leading to apparent word errors
any elementary student should catch. The challenge for a teacher is knowing
if a student has a real problem with “new” versus “knew” or if the error
is incidental.
- Obvious typographical errors
- Colloquial misspellings and abbreviations (email and text messaging)
- Minor genre format violations (APA versus MLA, for example)
Level 3: Common Errors
- Dangling modifiers
- “I” as an object, instead of “me”
- Lack of commas after “however” and similar words
- Misuse of commas in a series
- Their, these, that, who errors
- Errors with difficult verbs (confusing similar words)
Level 2: Moderate Errors
- Verb form errors
- Tense switching
Level 1: Serious Errors
There are some errors so severe that they indicate a
student is struggling with academic composition. Sometimes these errors
are the result of being a non-native speaker of English. In other instances,
they might indicate a learning disability. Unfortunately, there are also
those instances when the errors indicate the student’s previous writing
instruction was insufficient.
- Sentence fragments
- Run-on sentences
- Capitalization errors
- Subject-verb agreement
- Preposition errors
- Commas between verbs and complements
- Adverb misuse / errors in form
For an elementary school teacher, these errors are part of the learning
process. For a college or university composition instructor, these errors
are serious warning signs that a student is likely to struggle in all
his or her courses requiring essays or papers. With the current emphasis
on writing across the curriculum (WAC), a student must be able to recognize
and correct serious composition errors.