Which do you prefer - Holistic or Analytic marking?

      Honestly speaking, I personally very much prefer the holistic marking as compared to the analytic. To me, the former is deemed more practical, i.e. time efficient especially when a teacher already has so much to do. In addition, it also highlights the students’ strengths in the subject matter as opposed to the latter which is sometimes claimed to look more on both student’s weaknesses and strengths. This I believe is an important aspect when it comes to marking.

          

Stress???

Nevertheless, the purpose of the assessment do also play an important role in the selection of the above two mentioned marking scales. No doubt that when it comes to marking a huge load of examination papers on essays, i.e. the summative exam, the holistic marking would be a better suited one. However, during class lesson when a teacher is trying to teach students on writing a good essay by focusing on each criterion of the essay separately (content, organization, language, vocabulary, voice and mechanics), the analytic marking seems to play its role better. Reason being that the latter breaks down every aspect of the essay into smaller components and thus allows the possibility of looking at each aspect separately. Hence, teachers could actually now teach students to master one aspect of the writing skill at a time. Besides that, analytic marking also helps to identify the students’ strengths and weaknesses. This allows the teacher to be better equipped with information on the performance of the students. Moreover, with the scale given to students as the rubrics, the students would know what and how they are expected to perform both during the normal in-class ongoing formative assessment as well as during the summative assessment.

Rubrics- Holistic or Analytic

           To add on to that, reliability does play a role in selecting the marking scales too. An experienced teacher may appear to have no problem with using the holistic marking. However, an inexperience teacher or a fresh graduate, on the other hand, may not be so. They do not fully understand and could not distinguish between the set of key words used in the rubrics given yet. Hence, it is deemed more appropriate and easier for an inexperience teacher to actually apply the later marking scale.

          In conclusion, though I prefer the former marking over the latter, at the end of the day, the purpose of the task and assessment does have a say in the choice of the marking scales. When the practicality issue, such as when a teacher is loaded with a lot of marking to be done in a very short amount of time, is concerned, it would be wiser and more appropriate to apply the holistic marking. On the other hand, during normal days when a teacher is helping her students to master each aspect of the skills individually, the analytic marking would seem to be a better choice. 

Want to know more about holistic and analytic marking when it comes to writing evaluation for placement purposes? Click here.