Muniz 1

Matt Muniz
Conan Kmiecik
ENGL 361
12/5/2014
Evaluating With a Purpose
When it comes to student writing, evaluation is a key portion in their writing process.
Every type of evaluation should serve a purpose in making a students prose better through the
process of rough draft to final draft. Even though there are many different types of evaluating a
students writing, some are more essential than others. The top three essential evaluation
processes are student-teacher conferencing, the use of rubrics, and self-evaluation.
Conferencing is the most important form of responding to student writing. Because the
conferences are face to face, it gives the student a chance to clarify the subject matter of their
writing to their teacher. This can be successful in clearing up any sort of confusion there is with a
certain writing. Another great aspect of these conferences is that teachers can, create
meaningful relationships with an increasingly diverse student body (Lerner 203). By creating
these closer relationships with their teachers, students feel more comfortable within the
classroom. With this comfort level being raised, students are more prone to come to a teacher
with questions during this writing process. Conferencing between student writers and teachers
also gives the student the sense of a level playing field with their teachers. In Melanie
Sperlings study on the effects of conferencing between a teacher and some of his students, she
found this out through one of the female students named Misa. Through watching Misa and Mr.
Petersons conferences, Sperling noticed that, the push and pull, give and take, of conference
talk affords Misa the chance to assume authority as a writer as she both creates and seizes

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opportunities to master the information, skills, and values that inhere in the mature writers
world (Sperling308). By giving the students an authoritative role over their writing, it can help
produce more confidence and passion in what they are writing about. With this confidence and
passion, it will make the students pay closer attention during the review of their writing through
the evaluation process. Conferencing can also help students to understand and ask questions
about certain aspect of an assignments rubric.
Rubrics are important when it comes to evaluating a students writing because, rubrics
answer the questions regarding the criteria by which a students work should be judged and
therefore, the rubric becomes a scoring tool indicating what counts (Jackson and Larkin 40).
By handing out rubrics with writing assignments, students see right away what they should be
looking for in their writing. Rubrics help get rid of confusion of what is needed in a paper and
give a student an outline of what points will count for what within the paper. Rubrics are an old
stand-by when it comes to proficiency in grading, and in Megan Oakleafs study with NCSU
librarians, teaching faculty, and students on the academic use of rubrics she found that, 96% of
the raters stated that they believe rubrics have great instructional value (Oakleaf 982). With this
instructional value, rubrics help to keep students in line with what instructors are looking for in
an assignment. Another great thing about the rubric, is that it is used as a formative assessment
as well as a summative assessment. This happens with the rubric becoming a guide throughout
the project and also, provides a guide for clear communication among teachers, parents, and
students as expectations for academic success are clarified and refined toward the final product
(Jackson and Larkin 40-41). It then becomes summative because the, rubric is used to award a
final grade (Jackson and Larkin 41). Rubrics are a good tool to use as well because it gives a
student a sense of independence. Instead of having to go to an instructor for help with what is

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needed for a paper, they can just simply look at the rubric and figure things out themselves.
Along the lines of independence, rubrics can also aid a student in their self-evaluation of their
papers.
Self-evaluation is a great way to have students reflect on their writing in a manner that
digs deep into their writing. It allows them to be honest in their writing and gets them to reflect
on whether or not their writing complies with what the assignment needs. I find it important that
students sit back and think about what their words are portraying in an assignment. Melina Porto
has come up with a list of questions that she asks her writers to think about during their selfevaluation process. The most important questions in her sequence having to do with selfevaluation are, What do I do well as a writer and What do I plan to do to work on my goal
(Porto 42). By asking what a student does well as a writer will get them to look through their
papers and pick out good aspects and the bad aspects at the same time. And by asking what they
plan to do to work on their goal, it makes them think about the important points needed to be
made in the paper and aids them to stay away from going off of topic. Self-evaluation also
encourages students to assess their own compositions (Lindemann 243). This almost forces
students to be critical about their own writing in order to be satisfied with their product and how
well it goes along with what an instructor wants from a paper. With this assessment, reflection is
a key factor in making the paper better. This, encourages learners to take increased
responsibility for their own progress by raising awareness of their goals in language learning
(Porto 44). This awareness aids in just more than what the student needs, but it helps teachers
know what process students are going through to improve their writing. And as, they [students]
become more aware of what they wanted to do and where a paper fails to realize their intentions,
we [teachers] can offer help (Lindemann 244). With the building of independence because of

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these steps in self-evaluation, when the students do come with questions, they will feel like the
teachers are answering less, like a judge and more like an experienced, trusted advisor
(Lindemann 244). By building this independence and leaving the students to recollect on their
own writing, self-evaluation builds a stronger writer.
Evaluating student writing and progress through their writing process can be done in
many ways. These evaluations should be done for a good reasoning with the purpose to aid in
making the students writing better through the process. Out of all the ways to evaluate student
writing, student-teacher conferencing, the use of rubrics, and self-evaluation are the best due to
the abilities they have to connect students to teachers, the way they guide students in the right
direction and how they make a student become closer with their own writing.

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Works Cited
Jackson, Cynthia W., and Martha J. Larkin. "Rubric: Teaching Students to Use Grading
Rubrics." TEACHING Exceptional Children 35.1 (2002): 40-45. Sage Journals. Sage.
Web. 4 Dec. 2014.
Lerner, Neal. "The Teacher-Student Writing Conference and the Desire for Intimacy."College
English 68.2 (2005): 186-208. JSTOR.ORG. National Council of Teachers of English.
Web. 4 Dec. 2014.
Lindemann, Erika. "Responding to Student Writing." A Rhetoric for Writing Teachers. 4th ed.
New York: Oxford UP, 2001. 243-244. Print.
Oakleaf, Megan. "Using Rubrics to Assess Information Literacy: An Examination of
Methodology and Interrater Reliability." Journal of the American Society for Information
Science and Technology (2009): 969-83. Onlinelibrary.wiley.com. ASIS&T. Web. 4 Dec.
2014.
Porto, Melina. "Cooperative Writing Response Groups And Self-Evaluation." ELT Journal:
English Language Teachers Journal 55.1 (2001): 38. Education Research Complete.
Web. 4 Dec. 2014.
Sperling, Melanie. "I Want to Talk to Each of You: Collaboration and the Teacher-Student
Writing Conference." Research in the Teaching of English 24.3 (1990): 279321.Www.ncte.org. National Council of Teachers of English. Web. 4 Dec. 2014.