Assessing writing as individual practice: Where system, theory, instance, and practice precariously meet

When assessing student work within higher education, particularly within Western educational contexts, one indicator of successful writing is the presence of innovative and original thought; highly appraised writing is considered to be those which has the mark of the individual present and clearly communicated, while still adhering to the expectations of the genre. This chapter explores this tension between student works being viewed as both an artefact that contains typical patterns of the system and a specimen that marks it as noteworthy through an empirical investigation of assessor’s comments and in-text annotations on first-class student writing from a first-year drama module in a UK university in China. Through an ideational analysis of the assessor’s feedback on these high performing pieces of work, this work aims to draw attention to aspects of higher performing work that markers in the sample tend to focus upon in their consideration of the innovation and originality in student writing.