Effects of Course-Embedded Grammar Graders: Evidence from a Business College Writing Initiative Program

Lindsay C. Clark, Zijun Luo, & Ashly Bender Smith   |    Volume 15 Issue 2  |   

Writing support programs for students in writing-intensive, disciplinary courses are well established and take many forms, including communication centers, web-based skill development programs, and embedded writing consultants. This paper assesses the effectiveness of a program that embeds a writing grader, who assesses only the grammar of students’ submissions, to encourage and support business faculty in including written assignments. Our analysis of grammar errors across three writing assignments showed that students rarely included Status Marking Errors (e.g., nonstandard verb forms and double negatives) and did reduce errors from the first to last assignments. However, the cause of the error reduction and the program’s long-term effectiveness in improving students’ grammar skills is inconclusive. Based on our findings, we offer recommendations to program organizers for better aligning a program’s stated and practical goals when providing writing support.

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