Holistic grading: an alternative approach

Abstract

This paper describes a nontraditional approach to evaluating student writing: holistic grading. It involves much less time on the instructor's part and still yields a fair assessment of student writing. The rationale behind holistic assessment is to read a paper as an entire entity and to avoid dissecting it for details like spelling, punctuation, organization, etc. The paper is read and evaluated as a whole. Holistic assessment is used by many colleges and universities to evaluate final exams in lower-division writing classes.