Guidelines on Grading Undergraduate Syntax Assignments

Grading assignments is an essential part of the teaching process. But professors and TAs are expected to figure out how to do it on their own. This post outlines some guidelines that I have found to be useful when grading undergraduate syntax assignments.

1. The main purpose of an assignment is to help the students learn the material (skills and concepts) taught in the course by giving them another opportunity to practice solving syntax problems. Many of the guidelines below follow from this purpose.

2. Try to say something positive to each student, either in the overall comments, or on individual problems. For example, comments like the following are helpful: ‘Great job!’, or ‘Yes, that works.’ or ‘Interesting observation.’ Such positive comments will help strengthen the confidence levels of the students, and also make them feel that they can reach out to you in the future.

3. In order for assignments to be integrated into the course effectively, the turnaround time for grading should be quick, ideally by the next class period. For example, if the course meets MW, and the assignment is due W, then the assignments should be graded and returned (or made available online) before M. 

4. I allow students to discuss the assignments together, and to help each other understand the problems. But all written work, without exception, must be done independently. The students cannot share the written answer to a problem and hand in copies of it, because then they might not have actually learned anything at all. Direct copying of a problem results in a zero grade on the problem for both of the students involved. Similarly, direct copying of trees results in a zero grade for that tree. As it turns out, it is fairly easy to catch such copying. It usually involves a particular mistake (with identical wording or identical trees) being made by two different students. Your brain just naturally registers these improbable similarities.

5. Grading should be consistent across students. The best way to do this is to go through all the assignments once, then go through them one more time to ensure consistency, adjusting grades here and there to make them consistent across students.

6. If you make a correction by circling a mistake, then make sure to add a sentence or two about what the problem is. Grading the assignment is meant to help the students so that they can do better in the future. So, each correction should be accompanied by a small explanation. Similarly, do not use comments like ‘That is not the way the test works.’ Rather, explain in a sentence or two how the test works.

7. Sometimes a student makes a mistake, and then makes the exact same mistake another four times. It is a little unfair to them to be penalized four times for the same mistake, and a bit demoralizing. So in this case, I will grade the first mistake (e.g., subtracting a point), but just indicate the other repetitions of the same mistake.

8. In syntax, there are often minor variants of a syntactic representation that are OK, and should not be penalized. For example, I teach Minimalism, where all the trees are binary branching. But if a student uses unary branching for a VP (VP dominating V’ with unary branching), I do not count it as wrong. It is just a slightly different tradition. 

9. For students who do not understand the material, and get a low grade, make sure to encourage them to visit office hours and to attend section on a regular basis.

10. Part of the goal in grading the assignments is to find out what topics the students are having a difficult time understanding. Make a list of the recurring issues that came up in the assignments so that they can be reviewed in detail in section or in class.