Writing
objectives that enable them to measure students' progress often give
writing teachers fits, especially when the objectives are about
eliminating from work errors in such elements as:
I'll show you tricks for writing objectives that give you a way
to measure your progress toward achieving your learning goal of
having students apply those writing mechanics appropriately
in their own writing.
Don't reinvent the wheel
Instead of trying to come up with a list of the specific topics
you consider correct grammar, for example, it's much simpler begin
with someone else's list and modify it to fit your situation.
Here's an item from the Connors
and Lunsford study of the top 20 errors in college students'
writing:
Missing comma after an introductory element.
To use that as the basis of one of your course writing objectives,
slip the idea into the A, B, C, D format.
Make topics into objectives A, B, C, D
Here's one example of how that item could be turned into a writing
objective:
In their formal writing assignments,
seventh graders will write no more than 1 in 10 sentences in
which they omit the comma after an introductory element.
That objective identifies the:
-
Audience: seventh graders.
-
Behavior: writing using a comma after an introductory
element.
-
Conditions: formal writing assignments
- Degree of performance considered acceptable: No more
than 10% of sentences will contain the error.
You would have to explain what you mean by formal writing
assignments, but since that term probably will appear in multiple
writing objectives, you could define it somewhere other than in
each objective.
The topic-to-objective trick
Objectives must spell out how you will measure achievement.
Any time you want to turn a writing mechanics topic into an objective,
you can do it quickly by identifying:
- Items you can count.
You cannot measure "correct use of punctuation,"
but you can count the number of times a student writes it's
when the context calls for its.
- Sentence-specific questions that can only be answered
yes or no.
You can look at a sentence and ask, "Is it's correctly
used here?"
Performance standards options
You can define the writing mechanics performance standards for
your course (or annual) writing objectives in a variety of ways.
-
You could set different standards for timed writing and
untimed writing. Students under the gun to get an essay
finished are more likely to miss an error than if they had
a break between composing and editing.
-
You could set a standard for a group of errors. For
example, you might say student could have no more than 5 of
what we call boundary errors (fragments, run-together sentences,
comma splices).
-
You could make the standard proportional to the length
of the writing. If you plan 5 assignments of roughly 500
words and one of 5,000 words, you could set your standard
at errors per 500 words.
Why not call for no errors?
Naturally, we all would like error-free work. I know I don't
meet that standard, and I doubt that you do either.
When teaching students to write, we shouldn't set our standards
so high the average kid doesn't see any way of meeting them. That
kills any spark of motivation they may have.
By phrasing objectives so that students realize they don't have
to be perfect, you are more likely to encourage students
to make an effort.
If you can get students to a reasonable but less- than-perfect
standard, you will give them the skills to produce mechanically
correct work. It may be that all they will need is more practice
writing in order to produce error-free work.
Also, applying whatever students know of grammar and other
writing mechanics to their own work is a higher level learning
task, far more difficult than a worksheet or multiple-choice test.
To see why meeting an objective about writing mechanics requires
such concentrated effort, look at where that objective fits on
Bloom's taxonomy
of educational objectives.
There's another aspect of the argument against demanding error-free
work. Do you really want to ruin Caitlin's average because she
had one error in a paper she wrote in the hospital while recovering
from the H1N1 virus?
A reasonable performance standard lets students have a bad day
without ruining their records.
Objectives for long-range goals
If you are in a situation in which the goals are set for more
than one year, you can shape behavior toward those goals
through a ladder of objectives.
In the first year of your program, you might work to reduce boundary
errors to no more than 3 per 200 words. In the second year, you
might set your objective at no more than 1 error per 500 words.
You should not feel guilty about not addressing every error a
student makes in an assignment. You will accomplish much more
by working on a few errors until those errors rarely appear in
your students' final drafts.
The fact that focusing on fewer errors means less work for you
and less ego-damage to your students is a pleasant bonus.
