It is clearly crucial to be fair to students when marking exams. But you also need to be able to cope with a large number of scripts, often under intense pressure, so efficiency is another key issue. Race (2001a: 47-49) provides advice on these matters. The following is based on some of his main points:

• Do not mark too many papers in one sitting and don't have a daunting pile in front of you on the desk, but stack those you haven't yet done out of sight.
• Avoid halo effects: on a multi-question paper, don't allow a student's excellent answer to a translation influence you when marking a subsequent essay, with the result that you focus only on the good points and pass over weaknesses. Similarly, after marking a good script, be careful not to be over-critical of the next one.
• Control your pet hates: don't allow your dislike of certain things (eg wrong genders, missing accents, absence of paragraphs, repeated misspellings, such as in French *beacoup and *recontrer, or in German *errinern and *mussen) to cloud your judgement, and make sure these factors do not influence you if there is a 'benefit of the doubt' decision to be made.
• Avoid prejudices: much exam marking is now anonymous but this is not universal. If you do see a student's name, you must try to be especially objective and banish memories of class and homework performance (both positive and negative ones).
• Check back occasionally to scripts you marked earlier to ensure you are applying the same standards; for example, that you are not rejecting a translation of a word that you earlier accepted, or vice versa.
• Devise your own system for tackling the marking load: you may prefer to do all answers to Question 1 together or to mark whole scripts at a time. As long as you are vigilant and consistent in the latter approach, it probably makes no difference (although, as noted in 13.1.7, the former approach is likely to save you a bit of time.)
• As you mark, make a note of how well questions worked and which might have been framed better. This will help when you are setting the exam next time round. At this point it is also a good idea, before you forget them, to put down on paper any implications for the teaching of the module that arise from your marking of the exam.