2013年6月8日托?？荚嚜毩懽黝}目：

Some students prefer to have their final grades determined by numerous small assignments, whereas others prefer to have their final grades determined by only a few large ones. Which do you prefer and why?

People have differing philosophies about how best to grade student performance. Some believe grades should come from a steady stream of small assignments, whereas others think one or two large assignments are enough to accurately reflect a student's academic abilities. As a student, I myself would prefer to be graded through several smaller assignments.

First of all, every student has bad days. If you are only scored on one or two large assignments, one badly-timed misfortune can completely wipe out your grade point average (GPA). For example, if you were to catch mononucleosis while working on a big project-something that has happened to at least a couple of my friends-your grade on that project would suffer dramatically and your GPA would plummet, even though such events are really outside of your control. By spreading your total score over a number of small assignments, your overall performance wouldn't have to take such a drastic hit if an individual assignment didn't work out.

Second of all, there's students will feel less pressure if they have to tackle several smaller assignments as opposed to a couple of larger assignments. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, larger assignments require more organizational skills and autonomy to complete successfully. One fifty-page essay, for example, is harder to write than fifty one-page essays. When writing large essays, you have to create an outline, prepare extensive notes, edit sections separately, and stitch different parts together in a way that appears seamless; for a small one-page assignment, the planning and back-and-forth editing required is considerably less. Secondly, having only a couple of large assignments will make students more nervous about screwing up. That kind of pressure can cause students to perform below their actual academic ability.

Admittedly, having a small number of large assignments would give students more day-to-day freedom. It would allow students to manage their schedules more independently. However, I still think that smaller assignments would benefit students more overall. When left to their own devices, students often put off work until the last minute. Then they stay up working the night before the deadline in order to complete their assignment on time. This kind of procrastination, if not caught early, can become a crippling lifetime habit. By assigning students work at more regular intervals, such habits can be detected and corrected much sooner.

There are definitely benefits to both sides-a fewer number of large assignments can give students more decision-making power, whereas a greater number of small assignments can ease the academic pressure students feel and account for the bad luck they sometimes experience. Ultimately, however, the benefits of large assignments are outweighed by the tendency for bigger projects to encourage procrastination, so small assignments are still the best option. (458, Richard)