Marking Papers

Students typically do not understand the process involved in the marking of their papers. A comment often made is something like, “I put a lot of effort into writing this paper, but I was given a poor grade.” The problem with this comment is that what one person thinks of as a lot, another does not. In any event, writing a paper is always time consuming and difficult. Students often do not fully appreciate this, and think that simply because they put time and effort into writing a paper, it should be given a good grade. A paper is marked on the basis of what is presented, not how much time and effort was involved.