"A Modest Proposal" is a staple of first-year composition courses because it is short, in the public domain, and packed with rhetorical moves. It gives students a text they can analyze in a week and imitate in another. It also raises real questions about audience and purpose that carry into every later assignment. For instructors, the challenge is grading it across multiple sections without losing consistency.

Decide what writing skill the assignment serves. In many composition programs, the goals are argument, evidence, and audience awareness. Swift can serve any of them, but the prompt should point to one. A vague assignment produces vague essays, and the program-level outcomes disappear.

Consider pairing the reading with a short writing task before the full essay. A one-page response asking students to identify the narrator's audience and purpose gives you a baseline. It also lets you spot early on which students need more support with close reading.

Think about how the assignment fits with the rest of the syllabus. If the next unit is on research-based argument, the Swift essay can introduce ideas about credibility and ethos. If the course is heavy on revision, the essay can become a workshop text. Fit matters more than novelty.

Grading across sections and instructors

In programs with many sections, students should be held to the same standard regardless of instructor. A shared rubric, ideally with sample papers at each level, is the foundation. Without it, the same essay may earn a B in one section and a C in another.

• Argument: the essay makes a specific, arguable claim about Swift's rhetoric
• Evidence: quotations are chosen carefully and integrated smoothly
• Analysis: the student explains how techniques affect the intended audience
• Organization: paragraphs build a coherent line of reasoning
• Style and conventions: prose is clear and appropriate for academic writing

Feedback that fits a college workload

College instructors often teach four or five sections, so extended comments on every paper are not realistic. Focus on the biggest issue in each draft, and give concrete direction on how to fix it. A short, precise note usually helps more than a long one.

It can also help to use end comments to point to patterns and margin comments to point to specific sentences. This division of labor keeps feedback clear and helps students see the difference between global and local concerns. Students who see the difference tend to revise more strategically.

Norming and calibration

Programs that care about consistency often hold norming sessions where instructors score the same essays and compare results. These meetings are valuable but time-consuming. Recording the scores and rationale from each session builds a reference library for new instructors and adjuncts.

AI-assisted tools can support that work by applying the shared rubric to each paper and flagging where the score might differ from the norm. GraideMind is designed for this kind of rubric-based feedback, which makes it a useful check for programs trying to keep expectations aligned. Human judgment remains the final word, but a consistent first read reduces the range.

Scaling for large lectures and adjunct-heavy programs

Programs with large enrollment or many adjunct instructors face special pressure on grading time. Clear rubrics, comment banks, and shared exemplars help. So does a realistic assessment of how much feedback students actually use.

If the goal is a course where students write frequently and get useful comments, the workflow has to be sustainable. Tools that speed up the first pass leave instructors more time for conferences and revision support. That is where students often learn the most.