Edward Vigen

Hello Randi,

I wonder this myself. Soft skill, unlike hard skills, are more fluid and are not necessarily objective. I have implemented a plan to grade these skills more effectively in my classroom that I learned from my study of Chinese Mandarin.  When I was learning Chinese Mandarin, we were told from the beginning of the program a ranking system that was very objective as to what constituted mastery of the language. It was a simple scale of 0-5 with 0 meaning no ability and 5 being mastery. Each level in between was defined very thoroughly with visual/auditory/written examples so that we understood what each level was like. For the rest of my time of study, we would be assessed frequently against this scale. Obviously, most of us started at 0 with a few people at a 1, which was very basic, elementary knowledge of the language. As we progressed we began to notice how our vocabulary would expand, then our grammar and so on until each of us achieved the desired target level of at least 2. In my classroom, for writing assignments, I use the same scale with clearly defined expectations and benchmarks for all my students. Many start lower on the abilities but by the end of a course, everyone has made at least some improvement in their ability to communicate with the written language. In addition to a number score, I also provide verbal feedback on specifics for them to improve on. All this to say, I think that a rubric scale, if clearly defined, can really help with providing feedback to students, especially with regards to soft skills.