Tracking Grammatical Errors with a Database

Summary

While teaching freshman writing at St. Anselm College, I saw common grammatical errors again and again. Writing detailed feedback was time-consuming and tedious, but I was aware that students would be unlikely to overcome these problems on their own if I simply circled them in red. Instead I created a Windows program to help me mark the students’ papers.

How It Worked

Suppose a student submitted a draft of an essay. The essay contained a sentence with bad subject-verb agreement followed by a paragraph with an interesting idea that would have been stronger if it were supported with an example:

. . . Her list of reasons do not include the most important one: that she is bored.

She also writes about how her brother wants to die. Actually I think she is the one who has an obsession with death. Even when she doesn’t talk about it directly, some of the words she uses are morbid and dark.

On the student’s paper, I marked the sentence and paragraph with a “1” and a “2.”

In my computer program, I called up Subject-Verb Agreement, Number from my list of common errors and labeled it with a “1.” I checked Explanation and Example, and my program pulled up a description of subject-verb agreement. I might also have checked Exercise, in which case my program would have pulled up a workbook-style exercise on-screen.

I wanted to leave personal feedback for the paragraph, so I typed a short suggestion and labeled it “2.”

I printed out my feedback and stapled it onto the student’s essay. Here’s what the student saw:

1. Subject-Verb Agreement, Number
The subject of a sentence has to match its verb in number. That’s why we say things like “She does” but not “They does,” or “We have” but not “We has.”

Be careful of words that come between the real subject and the verb. In the sentence below, the real subject is “Dr. Jones,” so you have to use “was giving,” not “were giving”:

Dr. Jones, together with other scientists and environmental activists, was giving a press conference.

For details, see the Riverside Handbook, page 363.

2. This “obsession with death” is an interesting idea. You’ll make a stronger case, though, if you can quote one or two examples from the text to back it up. In your next revision, please show me a couple of the author’s sentences that contain “morbid” or “dark” language.


Objectives and Benefits

• The computer program saved me time; this enabled me to assign more papers over the course of the term, allowing the students more practice in revision.
  

• Typing my comments made them legible and inviting to read. Evaluations from the students indicated that they found this format helpful.
  

• Keeping a record of my previous responses enabled me to monitor a student’s progress better than I could have done through memory alone.
  

• Since I had varying examples and exercises for each grammatical error, a student who made the same mistake on several submissions received additional reinforcement of the lesson, not a repetition of exactly the same explanation.
  

• By creating the “canned” explanations, examples, and exercises in advance, I was able to put more thought into them than I would have if I had written them off the cuff.
  

• I once attended a faculty meeting (not at St. Anselm) at which writing instructors questioned whether grammar ought to be taught at the college level at all. My computerized approach allowed me to address grammar without abandoning other objectives such as critical thinking and reading, style, logic, structure, and research skills.
  

• The explanations and examples served almost as personalized grammar handbooks for the students containing short, relevant lessons.
  

• Including brief exercises forced students to follow up on their problems.