Grammar Feedback Without Grammar Penalties

Here's the conclusion of a seventh grader's plant experiment:

The plant that got more sunlight grow taller, it grew 14 cm and the one in the closet only grew 3 cm. This show that plants need light to make there food threw photosynthesis. if we did it again we should of used more plants so are results are more reliable.

Count the mistakes and you'll find about eight. Now read it again for the science. Marcus makes a clear claim, backs it with measurements, explains it with the right concept, and spots the weakness in his own experiment. Plenty of adults couldn't do that last part.

So what should his science grade say? If grammar costs him points, the grade says he's weak at science. He isn't. This post is about getting that right: giving students real grammar feedback, without letting grammar penalties bury what they actually know.

The short answer: grammar feedback helps students write better. Grammar penalties mostly don't. Give students feedback on their grammar on every piece of writing if you like, but only let grammar affect the score when your rubric has a separate row for conventions and the assignment is meant to assess them. Everywhere else, score the thinking and give feedback on the grammar.

What does the research say about grammar and writing?

Researchers have studied grammar teaching for more than a century. Three findings stand out, and together they explain why feedback works better than penalties.

1. Grammar drills don't make students better writers

In 2007, Steve Graham and Dolores Perin combined the results of dozens of writing studies with students in grades 4 to 12. Teaching grammar on its own, with lessons on parts of speech and sentence diagrams, had a small negative effect on the quality of students' writing (an effect size of –0.32). Sentence combining, where students practice joining short sentences into longer ones, had a positive effect of 0.50. Their report for schools, Writing Next, put it plainly: the negative effect "was small, but it was statistically significant."

Other reviews found the same thing. A team led by Richard Andrews in the UK reviewed the research and concluded that "there is little evidence to indicate that the teaching of formal grammar is effective" for improving writing (British Educational Research Journal, 2006). And in 2025, a large randomized trial in English primary schools found no effect of a grammar-teaching programme on children's story writing.

2. Grammar taught inside real writing can help

This doesn't mean grammar is pointless. It means how you teach it matters. A study by Debra Myhill and colleagues at the University of Exeter taught grammar inside writing lessons, showing students how a choice of sentence or word changes the effect on a reader. Those students improved their writing by 11.5%, compared with 6.4% for a comparison group (Research Papers in Education). Writing Next also notes that teaching grammar "within the context of writing" produced "strong and positive effects."

To be fair, the debate isn't completely closed. A large 2023 review of writing research for grades 6 to 12 found a positive effect for grammar instruction across the writing outcomes it measured (Graham and colleagues, Journal of Educational Psychology). The pattern across all of this research is consistent, though. Grammar helps when it's connected to the student's own writing, and does little when it's taught as a separate set of rules.

3. Feedback on errors improves accuracy

Here's the good news for teachers. When students get written feedback on their errors, their accuracy really does improve. A 2015 review of research on students writing in a second language found a moderate positive effect, with an effect size of 0.54 (Kang and Han, Modern Language Journal). A bigger 2023 review of 52 studies found that the gains last over time, and that different styles of correction worked about equally well.

Put those three findings together and you get a simple rule. Grammar improves through feedback on students' own writing, not through drills, and not through lost points.

Why grammar penalties backfire

Taking off points for grammar feels fair. Students should write correctly, and points get their attention. But the research points to three problems.

Grammar mistakes drag down the score for ideas, too

Even when teachers try to grade only the ideas, mistakes get in the way. In 2011, Steve Graham, Karen Harris and Michael Hebert reviewed studies where the same paper was scored with and without surface errors. Papers with more grammar mistakes got lower scores, even in studies where people were rating the content (Focus on Exceptional Children). The effect sizes were –0.56 for grammar errors and –0.38 for spelling errors. In their words: "A paper with more grammar errors was scored more harshly by teachers, teachers in training, and college instructors."

A rubric doesn't fully fix this. In a 2010 study in Assessing Writing, Ali Reza Rezaei and Michael Lovorn found that raters using a rubric "were significantly influenced by mechanical characteristics of students' writing rather than the content" (full study). A neat essay that missed the point of the task scored higher than one that answered it well but had errors.

So if you also take points off for grammar, students can end up paying twice: once on purpose, and once by accident.

The penalty doesn't fall evenly

Grammar penalties hit some students much harder than others:

• English learners, who may understand the science perfectly but are still learning English verb endings.
• Students with dyslexia and other learning differences, for whom spelling can be hard no matter how much they know.
• Students who speak another variety of English at home. A 2012 study in Assessing Writing by David Johnson and Lewis VanBrackle found that raters on a state writing exam judged features of African American English more harshly than English learners' errors. The researchers called it "linguistic discrimination".
  

The National Council of Teachers of English has held a clear line on this for decades. Its 1974 Students' Right to Their Own Language resolution asks teachers to respect students' home language, and also to give them "the opportunity" to learn the conventions of edited written English. Both at once. That's exactly what feedback without penalties does.

The grade stops meaning anything

A grade is supposed to tell students, families and next year's teacher what a student knows. If Marcus's science grade is dragged down by spelling, it's no longer a science grade. It's a mix of science and spelling, and nobody reading it can tell which part is which.

This is the same principle that runs through standards-based grading: one score should measure one thing.

And mistakes aren't going away. When Andrea Lunsford and Karen Lunsford studied college students' papers, they found about 2.45 errors per 100 words in 2006, almost the same as 2.26 in 1986. They wrote that the rate of errors "has stayed stable for nearly one hundred years" ("Mistakes Are a Fact of Life"). Every writer makes mistakes. The goal is fewer of them over time, not zero on every page.

Separate the ideas from the conventions

Let's go back to Marcus. Here's the same paragraph, scored two ways on a simple 12-point science rubric (claim, evidence, reasoning, 4 points each).

The first column tells Marcus he's a C student in science, and gives him a page full of red circles. The second tells him the truth: his science is excellent and his writing has two clear things to work on.

Notice that the grammar doesn't disappear. Marcus still hears about it, and in a way he can act on. That's the next section.

How to give grammar feedback that actually helps

Good grammar feedback is short, focused and something the student can act on. Here's how to give it.

1. Look for patterns, not single mistakes

Marcus made eight mistakes, but they fall into just three groups:

• Sound-alike words: there/their, threw/through, are/our, should of/should have
• Verb endings: grow/grew, show/shows
• Where sentences end: a comma joining two sentences, and a new sentence starting with a lowercase "if"

Three patterns are much easier to fix than eight separate red marks. Students learn rules, not one-off corrections.

2. Pick one or two to focus on

Circling every mistake feels thorough, but it buries the student. Even teachers don't catch them all. In the Lunsfords' study, teachers had marked only 38% of the errors in the papers.

Research on second-language writers suggests that feedback focused on a few types of error may work better than correcting everything. In the 2015 Kang and Han review, focused feedback had an effect size of 0.69 against 0.33 for correcting everything. That difference wasn't large enough to be certain, so treat it as a strong hint, not a rule. Choose the pattern that causes the most confusion for a reader, or the one the student makes most often.

3. Show one, and let them find the rest

Fix the first example yourself and explain why. Then tell the student how many more there are and ask them to find them. The 2023 review found that direct corrections, hints and explanations of the rule all worked about equally well. So pick whatever gets the student doing the thinking.

4. Explain the rule in plain words

"Wrong word" doesn't teach anything. "Their means it belongs to them; there is a place" does. Keep it to one sentence a student could repeat back to you.

5. Ask for a fix, not just a read

Feedback works when students use it. Ask them to correct the pattern, or to explain one correction in their own words and find another place in their writing where the same rule applies. It takes two minutes, and it's where the learning happens.

6. Save conventions for the right draft

On a first draft, focus on ideas and organization. Grammar feedback on a sentence that's about to be deleted is wasted effort. Bring conventions in for the final draft, when the ideas are settled.

Example: grammar feedback for Marcus

Here's what feedback might look like, with science and grammar kept clearly apart:

Your science: This is a strong conclusion. Your claim matches your data, and you used photosynthesis to explain why the sunlit plant grew more. Pointing out that more plants would make your results more reliable is exactly how scientists think.

One writing habit to work on: Watch out for words that sound the same but are spelled differently. For example, "make there food" should be "make their food", because their means it belongs to them. There are three more sound-alike mix-ups in your paragraph. Can you find and fix them?

That's about 90 words. Marcus knows his science is good, he knows one thing to fix, and he has a job to do. The verb endings and sentence boundaries can wait for the next piece of writing.

Feedback examples for common grammar patterns

In college students' papers, the Lunsfords found that some of the most common errors were using the wrong word, leaving out a comma after an opening phrase, unclear pronouns and spelling. Here are feedback examples for teachers to adapt for those and a few other everyday patterns:

When should grammar count toward the grade?

None of this means grammar should never count. Sometimes it's exactly what you're assessing. The question is whether the assignment is meant to measure it.

Grammar should count when:

• The standard is about conventions. The Common Core has whole standards on grammar, spelling and punctuation, such as L.7.1 and L.7.2 ("Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English"). When you're assessing those, conventions are the point.
• It's a final, polished piece. A published essay, a college application or a letter to a real audience should be edited. Correct writing is part of the job.
• Students have had a chance to fix it. If students have already had feedback on a draft and time to revise, the final draft can fairly hold them to it.

Grammar shouldn't count when:

• The assignment is about subject knowledge. In science, math, history or art, score what the rubric is about: the knowledge, the evidence, the reasoning. Give language feedback alongside it.
• It's a first draft or a quick write. Early writing is for thinking. Penalties make students play it safe with short, simple sentences.
• It's timed writing in class. Nobody edits well under the clock, so grade the ideas and note the patterns.

How to build conventions into a rubric fairly

If conventions count, give them their own row. Don't let them leak into every other score.

1. One row, clearly labeled. Call it "Conventions" or "Grammar and mechanics", and keep it separate from ideas, evidence and organization. That way a student can see exactly where the points went.
2. Describe readability, not error counts. "Errors are rare and never get in the way of meaning" is fairer than "fewer than 3 errors". A long, ambitious essay will have more errors than a short, safe one.
3. Keep the weight in proportion. Conventions should be one part of the score, not the biggest part. If the essay is about argument, the argument rows should carry most of the points.
4. Grade the pattern, not each instance. The same comma mistake made twelve times is one thing to learn, not twelve separate penalties.

For more on building rubrics for writing, see our guide to argumentative writing rubrics.

Six mistakes to avoid

1. Marking every error. It overwhelms the student, and research suggests a focus on a few patterns may work better.
2. Taking points off in content subjects. A lab report's science score should be about the science.
3. Counting errors. A count punishes students for writing more, and for trying harder sentences.
4. Fixing everything yourself. If you correct every mistake, you've done the learning. Show one, and let the student find the rest.
5. Grammar comments on a first draft. Fix the ideas first. The sentences may not survive the next draft.
6. Treating dialect as error without explanation. If you're asking for a formal convention, say so, and explain when and why it's expected. "In formal writing, we use he doesn't" teaches. A red circle doesn't.

Doing this in GradingPal

Finding every pattern in 30 essays takes time, and that's usually when grammar penalties creep in. They're quicker than explaining. GradingPal's grammar check is built to give you the feedback without the penalty. Here's how it works:

• One switch per assignment. Turn on "Check grammar" in the assignment's grading rules. If you turn it on for work you've already graded, it only runs the check. Every score stays where it was.
• A separate Grammar tab. In the grading view, a Grammar tab sits next to Rubric Scoring and Feedback, with a count, like "Grammar · 12". Tiles for spelling, grammar, punctuation and capitalization show you the shape of the problem at a glance, and double as filters. That makes it easy to spot a pattern, like Marcus's sound-alike words.
• Underlined in the student's own work. Each finding is underlined on the exact words in the document. Click a finding and the document jumps to it. Open one and you get a plain explanation and a suggested fix.
• You can overrule it. Dismiss any suggestion you don't agree with, like a word that's right for your student's meaning. It disappears from the student's view too, and stays dismissed if the check runs again.
• It follows the English you teach. The check uses the assignment's language setting, so "colour" is correct in UK English and flagged in US English. Spanish, French, German and Portuguese writing is checked in those languages.
• Grammar never changes the score. Findings inform you and the student. The score comes from your rubric. If you want conventions to count, add a conventions row to your rubric, just as you would on paper.
• The written feedback stays on the ideas. The feedback knows about the grammar findings, so it doesn't list them one by one. The Grammar tab carries the grammar; the feedback is about the thinking.

A few details that are useful to know:

• On typed work, the check reads every sentence. On handwritten work and slides, it flags the more noticeable errors with page references, and marks the ones it's unsure about.
• You can tell the feedback how to handle grammar, in your own words. An instruction like "Mention at most one grammar pattern, and ask the student to find the other examples" can be saved and reused, or set to "Always include this" for every new assignment.
• For first drafts, you can hide scores when you share feedback, so students read the comments before they ever see a number.
• Nothing reaches a student until you've reviewed it and shared it.

Teaching English learners? Our guide to giving feedback to English language learners covers feedback in a student's home language.

The bottom line

Grammar matters. Students deserve to know how to write clearly and correctly. But points off for every mistake don't teach that, and they make grades less honest.

So keep the two apart. Score the thinking. Give grammar feedback on patterns, one or two at a time, in words a student can use. Ask them to fix it themselves. And when conventions really are the point, give them their own row in the rubric.

Want to try it on your next set of essays? Start free with GradingPal, turn on the grammar check for one assignment, and see the feedback without the penalty.