Few novels generate as much essay writing as The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, and few produce such uneven drafts. Students arrive with strong opinions about Duddy's hustle, but their arguments often drift into plot retelling by the second page. A teacher with 120 papers on the novel can easily spend ten minutes on each one, which adds up to a lost weekend. Faster grading starts with recognizing which problems repeat across most papers, so you can respond to patterns instead of rediscovering them every time.

Before reading a single paper, write down the three or four moves a strong Duddy essay must make. For example, the writer should take a clear position on whether Duddy's ambition is admirable or corrosive, support it with specific scenes, and explain how Richler's irony shapes the reader's judgment. Having those moves written out in advance gives you a fixed lens, which prevents you from rewarding charming prose in one paper and overlooking missing analysis in the next. It also makes your comments shorter because you are measuring against a known target.

Next, sort papers by the problem they share rather than grading them in the order they were turned in. Many teachers find that a third of the class summarizes Duddy's schemes without arguing anything, another third states a thesis but never returns to it, and the rest produce genuinely analytical work. Once you know the groupings, you can write one detailed explanation for each common problem and apply it consistently. This approach keeps comments substantive while removing the repetitive typing that makes grading feel endless.

Build a comment bank around the novel's common pitfalls

A comment bank is simply a set of pre-written, thoughtful responses to errors you know you will see again. For Duddy Kravitz, those errors tend to cluster around moral judgments that lack evidence, quotations dropped in without explanation, and discussions of Montreal that treat the setting as background instead of as a force shaping the characters. Writing each comment carefully once, with a clear example of what a revision could look like, saves enormous time. You can then personalize a sentence or two for each student instead of drafting from scratch.

• Thesis lacks a debatable claim about Duddy's character or choices
• Quotations appear without any analysis of word choice or tone
• Plot summary replaces argument in the body paragraphs
• Setting and Jewish immigrant context are mentioned but never connected to the thesis
• Conclusion repeats the introduction instead of extending the argument

Grade one criterion at a time

Instead of reading each paper once and assigning every score at the same moment, try grading a single criterion across the whole stack. On the first pass, you might only check whether each thesis takes a defensible stance on Duddy. On the second, you look at evidence, and on the third, you look at organization and style. Your attention stays narrowly focused, and you calibrate more accurately because you are comparing similar passages from different students side by side.

This method also protects against fatigue, which quietly distorts scores. A paper graded at the end of a long evening usually gets a harsher or looser reading than the one graded first, even when the quality is identical. By rotating through criteria and starting at different points in the stack, you reduce the order effects that make grades feel arbitrary. Students notice consistency, and they are far more likely to accept feedback that clearly applies the same standards to everyone.

Where AI can take over the repetitive work

AI grading tools are most useful when they handle the repetitive layer of feedback while the teacher keeps control of judgment. A rubric-aligned tool can flag essays that lack a thesis, identify paragraphs that summarize instead of analyze, and draft criterion-level comments tied to your own standards. That gives you a first pass in minutes, which you can then review, adjust, and personalize. The key is that the rubric comes from you, so the feedback reflects what you actually taught about Richler's novel.

Teachers who adopt this workflow usually report that their comments become more detailed, not less, because the time saved on routine observations goes toward the harder conversations. Instead of writing the same note about unsupported claims for the fortieth time, you can spend your energy on a student whose argument about Duddy and his grandfather is genuinely promising but underdeveloped. Faster grading is only valuable if the feedback stays meaningful, and that is the standard worth holding any tool to.

Keep a record so next year is easier

After you finish grading, take ten minutes to note which mistakes appeared most often and which comments worked. If thirty students misread Duddy's treatment of Yvette as simple romance, that tells you something about how the unit was taught, and you can address it earlier next time. Over several years, this record becomes a refined set of mini-lessons and rubric language that makes both teaching and grading more efficient.

It also helps to save a few anonymized examples of strong, average, and weak responses to the same prompt. Showing students what a convincing paragraph on Duddy's ambition looks like, next to a vague one, gives them a concrete picture of the rubric. When students understand the target before they write, you spend less time correcting basic misunderstandings and more time responding to genuine ideas.