This upcoming semester at my university, I'll be moving to the actual English Department, which means that I'll be teaching English majors. I've been given three sections of "Advanced Writing," which should be comprised mostly of 3rd and 4th year students. While I've taught writing before at my previous uni and in various camps, it's my first time doing it with such high-level students.
I think preparation is key and I've torn myself away from the beach here in beautiful Koh Lanta (which is fabulous by the way) to get a start on it. Here's a writing grading rubric I've come up with. I'll use it for my two big assignments and the midterm and final exam. It's very much a work in progress so any feedback would be appreciated from you, my smart readers. I'm wondering whether it's focused too much on form/conventions of writing and too little on the actual ideas. Thoughts?
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I've taught 10 years in Korean Unis, the last two in an English Ed dept at a National University. . . I think your rubric is a little optimistic (NO spelling or grammar errors?). . . and gives no room for originality and creativity. This is the biggest problem for Korean students, and focusing them to try to write "perfect cohesive-- do they really know what you mean?-- sentences" will take them away from writing something that you really want to read.
My #1 Rule of Writing is "don't be boring" and I weigh content heavily. The thing about writing is you can always fix the grammar (well, within reason. . . if it's understandable. . . and after 10 years in Korea I understand most of what gets turned in. . . even if it really makes no sense!!). If it isn't interesting, heartfelt, compelling. . . there's little I can do to help make it "readable". I give weekly assignments, but only grade 3 revisions (chosen from their weekly assignments). I do use rubrics for these, but always leave room for creative and interesting ideas, words, descriptions . . . advanced English majors need to be able to produce interesting, original and compelling work.
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