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Commenting Advice for Philosophy TAs, Part 2

January 2014  |  Status: First Draft

This is a continuation of Part 1. They are not as essential as the previous points, but if time permits, it’s good to follow these, too.

4) Tell How They Can Get Better, Not Just How They Did

It is usually a good idea to point the student in the right direction rather than simply pointing out an error.

“The author says that P” is better than “This is not what the author says”, not only because it is more specific, but also because it suggests a positive improvement instead of merely drawing attention to a negative aspect of the paper.

Likewise, instead of “This sounds irrelevant”, write “Explain how this is relevant to your thesis”. Suggesting improvement, even in such simple terms, is much more helpful from the point of view of the student, because knowing that you made an error is not helpful at all if you don’t know how to avoid making similar errors in the future. So tell the student what to do, and how to do it.

Moreover, even when you’re saying the same thing, a comment that is couched in a positive tone is much more encouraging than a comment that is couched in a negative tone. A purely negative comment achieves nothing but eliciting a defensive reaction. (By the way, if you really must make a negative comment, make it a comment about the paper, e.g. “This argument is based on a misunderstanding”, rather than about the student, e.g. “You misunderstand”.)

One way to make great comments is to think that you’re trying to help the student improve his or her paper by one full letter grade.

Think of it this way. Good comments on a “B” paper tend to point out the kinds of mistakes without which the paper might have gotten an “A”, and suggest specific courses of action that might help the student avoid the same mistakes. For example, you might challenge the student to explain how the author’s three arguments depend on one another in a circular way, instead of focusing on their individual weaknesses — in other words, challenge her to take a more holistic view.

Now extend that approach to a “C” paper. Point out the kinds of mistakes that are preventing the paper from getting a “B”, but don’t dwell on the subtle details that you’d look for in an “A” paper. For example, you might ask the student to cover a major point that he missed, but without grilling him over the minor details of that point. Those are probably too much for the “C” student to handle right now, anyway. But it’s entirely possible for a “C” student to improve to a “B” in a couple of months, so you aim for that. Most introductory courses in philosophy have at least three assignments with increasing weight, so there is ample opportunity to improve gradually.

Meanwhile, comments on an “A” paper should challenge and encourage the student to write an “A+” paper, whatever the standard for that honor might be. (Some instructors have a policy of never giving an “A+” to a philosophy paper, while others reseve it to papers that exhibit some specific virtue.)

Of course you shouldn’t penalize a paper for not addressing an issue that is clearly above the level of the course. But it doesn’t hurt to give an already excellent student a glimpse of the greatness and profundity that lies beyond PHIL 101. Even if the student never manages to reach the forbidden grade in that course, if you keep encouraging him to be think deeper, more thoroughly, and more creatively, you will see a definite improvement and the student’s future papers will be a pleasure to read.

In my classes there were always a couple of students whose papers I eagerly awaited every time there was an assignment. Reading their papers and wondering what to suggest next were some of the most memorable moments of my TAship.

5) Read between the Lines

Even the best philosophers often produce ambiguous arguments, leaving centuries of future philosophers with full-time jobs interpreting them one way or another.

Students are no different. In fact, due to their lack of experience, the arguments they produce are probably even more ambiguous than anything cooked up by an ancient philosopher. Students also need to practice writing down exactly what they think, so even if they have a relatively clear idea in their mind, they end up with vague and ambiguous arguments by the time they are ready to confront the fact that their printer is out of ink.

As a result, most papers can be interpreted in at least two different ways: a charitable interpretation (CI) based on what the student seems to be trying to say, and an uncharitable interpretation (UI) based on what the paper actually manages to say.

The grade itself should be based on UI for the most part, although I wouldn’t completely discount CI if it is easily noticeable between the lines. Ask your instructor if you’re unsure about this.

The comments, however, should almost always take both interpretations into account. You should let the student know that you understand what she intended to say, and suggest changes that would allow CI to be expressed more clearly. More precise definitions, clearer summaries, and better examples could all help move the paper’s UI closer to CI — and that, right there, is often an improvement of one full letter grade.

Taking both CI and UI into consideration also helps prevent you from making unspecific and/or misdirected comments. When a student can’t understand your comments, it’s rarely because you’re too smart for the student to follow. More often, it’s because you misunderstood the student’s argument and you and the student are talking past each other. Don’t let this happen!

An exception is when the paper is so bad that even CI contains serious misunderstandings of the course material. In that case, just address the elephant in the room instead of trying to identify the fine line that distinguishes CI from UI.

6) Practice Handwriting

Being a “computer guy”, I fell into the trap of typing my comments, printing them out, and stapling them to the back of the paper during the first couple of years of my TAship. But at one point, I had a bad cold, and it was difficult to sit up for several hours in front of my bulky programmer-grade desktop PC. So I crawled into the bed with a cheap mechanical pencil, some extra leads, and the stack of papers I had to mark that week.

Surprise, surprise! After I started handwriting all my comments, students and instructors alike seemed to find them much more helpful. I don’t think it was because I wrote longer comments — in fact, it’s easier to type longer comments on a computer — but rather because it’s easier to circle things and point arrows at them when you’re scribbling on an actual piece of paper. The benefits greatly outweighed the handicap of working with a mucus-saturated head!

Without clear references to specific parts of the paper (not just page numbers or paragraph numbers), it’s very easy for a typewritten comment to wander off into the realm of generality. You’re no longer commenting on specific parts of the paper, you’re commenting on the paper as a whole. Likewise, it’s much easier for a student to lose track of which parts of the paper you’re referring to, so he or she will take your criticism as a criticism of the paper as a whole, not of the specific parts.

Although your comments definitely should address the quality of the paper as a whole, that’s only half of what you should be doing. As I said above, in order for the student to learn from your feedback, you should point out specific errors and suggest specific improvements. Unless you own an expensive, futuristic machine that can print comments directly at arbitrary locations in a stapled-together stack of paper, your hand is much better at doing that.

If you really prefer to type your comments, make extensive use of numbers or symbols to mark relevant sections, sentences, or words in the paper, and refer to them in your comments. That should mitigate the disadvantages somewhat. But unless your handwriting is an indecipherable mess, by all means give your computer a break.

One word of caution: if you wrote down the grade on the actual paper, and you need to change it later, make sure you erase or cover the previous grade very thoroughly so that the student can’t see it. Seeing that the grade changed is somewhat OK if the grade went up, but disasterous if it went down. If unsure, use a light pencil and a good eraser.