I believe most of us look to similar evaluative criteria when grading student essays. An excellent essay must demonstrate a command of the topic; the argument must be well developed with a clear analytic focus; the essay must be logically organized and well supported; the prose must exhibit syntactic fluency and variety; and the paper must be generally free from errors in grammar and punctuation.

The idea to have students evaluate their writing projects came out of my desire to transcend the pain of the grading process while maintaining rigorous standards. I now require my students, either through an in-class or homework exercise, to evaluate their own essays before they turn them in to me for a final grade.

As a teacher of writing, I have spent the better part of eight years developing more effective methods for teaching my students to write with more analytic insight and syntactic fluency. To date, the self-grading exercise has proven the most effective means of inviting students to embrace writing as a process of intellectual discovery and personal commitment.

I should clarify that I teach writing as a process; this means that my students usually submit at least a first complete draft and then a final draft of every major essay before they receive a final grade. On the day they turn in their first complete draft (and I clarify that this draft should be revised and edited and should reflect their best effort), they engage the critical practice of grading their own essays. The first time I announce to a class that they will be grading their papers, I'm greeted with great enthusiasm—they joke that of course this means they all get A's. Once the joking has subsided, I explain that the grade they choose has little bearing on the grade I put on the essay. Instead, the purpose of the exercise is to create a focus and lexicon for a dialogic exchange between the student writers and the instructor grader (me).