A Thing Called Writing

I have always found grading papers very much subjective, and it seemed almost impossible to be objective with it.  Well, there would be certain standards and levels of proficiency to which graders can refer to when trying to grade papers as objectively as possible.  However, the objective grading seems to be working only when the writing pieces are either extremely poorly-written or extremely well-written.  Anything in between is subject to subjective grading.  

                I could agree with and will probably adapt the writing assessment Hicks was referring to in his article “Enabling Assessment Over Time with Digital Writing Tools” because it seems to be the most logically fair assessment to me, at least the formative part of the assessment.   I do think that the formative assessment—commenting on drafts, holding writing conferences, and practicing peer-review sessions—can assess the ‘process’ part of writing; it will not only assess writing but also help improve it through those conversations about writing, which seems both progressive and fair.  On the other hand, the summative part of writing assessment—putting a letter grade on final draft/portfolio—seems to be something out of teacher’s or anyone’s authority.  

                There are certain standards or standardized criteria for writing on which teachers/graders can base their grading to be as fair and consistent as possible; however, there are many books that have been published and also loved by many people but could possibly receive a grade lower than an A had they been graded based on those standardized criteria for writing despite the fact that their quality has been proved by being accepted to be published to the world. 

 So, what is this thing called writing? What on earth is this thing that we can’t seem to grade ever fairly?

If you think about it simply, I guess you could determine which writing pieces are worthy of A’s based on their ideas, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, conventions, etc.  However, I still can’t find any fair way or criteria to determine which writing pieces are worthy of F’s.  Writing is, as Hick suggested, is a way of discovering and developing one’s identities as one keeps writing.  Writing is not a static thing.  It is very much a dynamic, evolving process of developing one’s identity.  Who are we to grade one’s self-discovery in progress, one’s development of identity? Does it really do any more good than harm to put a concluding letter grade on one who is still in process of growth?