>While I don't have too much to say about holistic scoring itself, I have
>observed that, after years of using it at my college, and after teaching
>hundreds of writing students who have come through secondary schools where
>it has been used, we are all suddenly starting to scream at our students'
>syntactical ineptness. This may be post hoc ergo propter hoc thinking, but
>I think not.
 
I doubt it's really true that teachers in high school or college use
holistic scoring for day-to-day grading of papers. Holistic scoring may be
used for placement, assessment, research, etc. But if you look at a set of
papers graded by typical English teachers at whatever level, I think you'll
find the vast majority of marks referring to spelling, punctuation, and
"grammar." There will be a few comments on contents and global concerns,
but not that many. (This may be because comments about contents were made
on drafts, reserving comments on mechanics for evaluating the final
editing; this is the optimistic view of how teachers grade papers.)
 
In other words, despite advances in our knoweldge about scoring papers, I
doubt that there are any great changes in what actually happens when
writing teachers grade their students' papers.
 
Bill McCleary
 
William J. McCleary                     Editor: Composition Chronicle
Associate Prof. of English              Viceroy Publications
Coordinator of Secondary English        3247 Bronson Hill Road
SUNY at Cortland                        Livonia, NY 14487
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