Word Works
Learning through writing
at Boise State University
Number 90-91 February-March 1998
Published by the BSU Writing Center
Learning through writing
at Boise State University
Number 90-91 February-March 1998
Published by the BSU Writing Center
Responding to student papers
Responses to avoid and
productive advice to give
productive advice to give
By
Jessica Mosher
Editors' note: In this special
double issue, we reprint an article from Teaching with Writing, the
Writing Intensive Curriculum newsletter of Oregon State University (Volume 7,
#1, Fall 1997). Jessica Mosher has used up-to-date research on teacher's comments
on student papers and students' responses to those comments. Responding to
student writing is difficult territory. How can we respond in ways that will
lead to learning, not merely justify the grades we put on papers? Mosher has
provided an excellent guide. We thank the author and Vicki Collins, editor of Teaching
with Writing, for allowing us to reprint the article and to post it on our
web site.
ACCORDING TO ROBERT CONNORS, early
in the twentieth century a number of grading scales were proposed by which
teachers rated student writing. Subsequently, many teachers only deemed it
necessary to assign a letter grade to those papers, a grade scrawled out in
ominous red ink. The grade did not explain what the teacher thought of the
content, the mechanics, the style, or even the organization of the paper. The
student was left to understand the reasoning behind the grade on his/her own,
hoping to find an answer by the time the next paper was due. However, by the
1950's the manner in which teachers approached papers began to change. Teachers
realized that letter grades alone were not aiding students in sharpening their
writing skills. As teachers realized that rating scales truly were only serving
"as instruments for administrative judgment rather than for student
improvement," they gradually abandoned them (Connors 204). Teachers began
addressing students' papers with more care, viewed essays as "real
audiences," and regarded marginal and end comments as the most effective
ways of explaining to students what needed attention in their writing (204).
The use of marginal and end comments
is still in practice today, and current research is revealing "what
teachers have long suspected, hoped, or assumed: that students read and make
use of teacher comments and that well-designed teacher comments can help
students develop as writers" (Straub, "Students' Reactions" 91).
Therefore, teacher commenting should not be undervalued because sometimes the
most productive way of approaching a student's writing is through written response.
But a teacher must also be warned.
While commenting is a way of guiding a student to another writing level, a
teacher must be cautious in how he/she chooses to comment. Because writing
teachers shape writers, a teacher needs to understand that not all commenting
is useful, and some comments may even be damaging (Sperling 177). This essay
reviews recent scholarship on responding to student writing and discusses
different types of responses to student writing including what types of
responses teachers should avoid and what types of responses teachers should
embrace.
When commenting on student papers,
what appropriate guidelines, then, should a teacher follow? Richard Straub, in
"Students' Reactions to Teacher Comments: An Exploratory Study,"
discusses what students believe is most useful in the way of teacher response.
Straub introduces nine categories of teacher comments: focus, specificity,
mode, criticism, imperatives, praise, questions, advice, and explanations.
1. Focus. The focus of a comment usually
refers to what kind of comments the teacher makes: global (ideas, development,
organization) or local (wording, sentence structure, correctness) (100).
Students did not prefer one over the other and believed that both were useful
when reviewing their papers. One concern students did have is with the teacher
commenting on the ideas of the paper, a global issue. This concern regarded
"authority" and how certain comments appeared to work "against
the ideas that were already down on the page" (101). Students also reacted
negatively to teacher attempts to correct or revise words or sentences. The
students regarded this as the teacher's attempt to claim their writing
authority because they saw the corrections as a reflection of "the
idiosyncratic preferences of the teacher" (101).
2. Specificity. In all cases, the
students wanted the teacher's comments to be specific. Students did not
"respond favorably to any comment that they saw as unclear, vague, or
difficult to understand" (Straub, "Students' Reactions" 102).
For example, a teacher who stated "you need more evidence to support your
main point" needed to state what evidence the student should have used, or
at least suggested some directions the student could take in order to find more
evidence. The consensus was that "comments that were specific and
elaborate" were much more useful than those that were vague (102).
3. Mode. In mode, or the tone of the
teacher's voice, the students preferred comments that "sounded helpful and
encouraging" rather than those that were terse and seemed "harsh and
critical" (103). A comment such as "Not so. See above," made the
students become defensive and caused them to leave the material as it was
initially written.
4. Criticism. When it came to
criticism, students preferred comments that were more like reader than teacher
responses: students "felt these comments had a softer tone, and they
appreciated the way the comments offered an individual reader's perspective on
the writing" (105). For example, while students found the comment
"You've missed his point" as offensive because it came "right
out and [said that the paper was] bad," they found the comment "I
hear LeMoult saying something different--that drugs are so dangerous to society
largely because laws make them illegal" as objective and words they could
easily work with during the revision process (104). Therefore, students
appreciated teacher responses that focused on what the student was trying to
say, and those that helped him/her see where he/she could change the wording so
that the writer's own message would become clearer (105).
5. Imperatives. The practicality of
imperatives, or commands, was debated in the Straub article. While most
students believed, as currently hypothesized, that imperatives were useless and
suggested the teacher's attempt to control student writing, others saw
imperatives as a worthwhile way of commenting. A student said that "even
though it's telling [a student] how to write the paper, it's basic info that
would make the paper more effective" (106).
6. Praise. Praise was always welcome
in students' papers, but again they wanted the praise to be specific and to be
"accompanied by an explanation of what the teacher saw as good"
(106).
7. Questions. Interestingly, the
efficiency regarding the use of questions in a paper was debated. While
students did "appreciate the freedom and control over their writing"
that questions allowed, sometimes the students were unclear on where to go with
the questions (109). Students who complained about the overuse of questions
stated that they "wanted more direction and a clearer sense of what the
teacher wanted" (109).
8. & 9. Advice and Explanations.
The overwhelming majority of students thought that advice and explanations were
the key to productive revising. Students said that advice such as "in your
next draft try to focus on developing more convincing arguments against
legalized drugs" identified the problem "in a way that [made] the
teachers seem like they cared" (107). Advice that was most favored was
advice that suggested instead of commanded ways to approach revision, and
advice that was followed by an explanation. The teacher would thus be praised
if he/she added to the above sentence, why don't you add "point by point,
your opponent's view, as clearly and objectively as you can" so that
"then you can deal with each of his arguments and show the weaknesses in
his position?" (109). The most productive comments thus not only gave
advice, but also showed how to carry the idea of the advice throughout the paper.
In summary, although students did
not appreciate comments that were sternly voiced and appeared to take control
of the paper's ideas and organization, they were appreciative of comments that
suggested how to restructure or add to their ideas. Generally, students realize
that they need direction in their writing and understand the importance of
teacher commenting, but only take heed of the teacher's suggestions if they are
worded as just that--as suggestions and not commands. Straub, in another
article titled "The Concept of Control," states that "all
teacher comments in some way are evaluative and directive" and "in
all comments, a teacher intervenes in the writing" (247). It is the way
that the direction is presented, it is "how [teachers] receive and respond
to the words the students put on the page that speaks loudest in our
teaching" (246), and determines if the student is going to follow or
ignore the comments. For example, in Straub's essay, two teachers give the same
advice, yet in very different ways.
While Edward White "is more
willing to tell the student what she would do best to work on through directive
comments," Peter Elbow becomes the "sounding board for the writing,
one who plays back his reading of the text and subtly injects evaluations and advice
for revision within these reader responses" (245). Both teachers had the
same message, one that stressed a strengthening of the argument, but they had
different ways of approaching the reader, one less intrusive than the other.
The student will be more responsive to Elbow's comments because they are
friendlier and more suggestive than White's. Elbow's comments are "among
the least controlling modes of response since they do little more than
dramatize how the words are being understood by an individual reader, not by
someone in charge of judging, criticizing, or improving the writing"
(243).
Successful commenting can be
explained in analyzing the ways that commenting has not been productive
according to past research. What kinds of responses should teachers avoid on
first drafts?
Summer Smith in "The Genre of
the End Comment" suggests that teachers avoid the generic comment.
Examples of generic commenting are "good" or "nicely done"
as an end comment, the "awkward" as a marginal comment, and the use of
generalities such as, "you worked hard on planning this paper--the outline
was a good idea" (Smith 254). Robert Connors and Andrea Lunsford suggest
that generic comments are created by the "attempts of teachers to squeeze
their reactions into a few pithy phrases, to roll all their strength and all
their sweetness up into one ball for student delectation" (Connors 200).
Summer Smith suggests that the tendency for instructors to write
"generically" stems from the fear of damaging a student's
"fragile self-esteem" (250). Moreover, "the educational
institution also exerts power over the teacher's commenting by determining the
focus of the teacher's curriculum . . . and by requiring that the teacher
return the papers with comments within a specified period of time" (250).
Although teachers may think generic
comments do not harm students, they do more harm than good because they do in
fact offend students. In general, generic comments give students "the
impression of hastiness" and are viewed as "insincere statements"
(Smith 254-55). A student expects constructive criticism from a teacher and
when he/she receives a general and hastily written comment, not only is he/she
insulted because the teacher appears not to have dedicated much time to
reviewing his/her paper, and thus has seemingly regarded his/her ideas as
insignificant, but he/she is also led to believe that revision is useless. In
the end, what a teacher receives is a crude final draft because the generic
comments led to students putting little effort into revision (254).
Another problem is found in the way
teachers present positive vs. negative feedback. In research conducted by
Connors and Lunsford in 1993, negative commenting dominated teacher responses
to student papers (210). While it is true that students sometimes regard
negative comments as more useful than generic comments (because negative
feedback at least guides the writer to correcting something in the paper),
their usefulness largely depends on how they are phrased. In most of the papers
analyzed by Connors and Lunsford, teachers spoke harshly to students, with
comments like, "Learn to use subordination . . . You are still making
comma splices! You must eliminate this error once and for all. Is it because
you aren't able to recognize an independent clause?" (210) and, "You
know better than to create comma splices at this point in the semester!"
(215) While these comments undermined the student's ability to recognize
errors, other comments only included a few words which insulted the intelligence
of the writer: "Handwriting--learn to type" (211). These comments did
not motivate the writers to revise, but only caused the writers to push the
paper aside and ignore it. Again, this form of responding to papers causes the
students' final drafts to be presented to the teacher in crude form.
A third type of response to avoid is
one that takes away the authority from the writer. In this type of commenting,
the teacher assumes control over the student's words on the page. There are
several ways to do this, but one is found in the tendency for the teacher to
edit the paper instead of actually responding to it. As stated previously,
before the 1950s, the "most widely accepted idea was that teachers just
were to correct, perhaps edit, and then grade student papers" (Connors
201). In more recent years, not only do teachers claim authority over a
student's text by their tendency to edit, but also by their tendency to be
directive in their comments for the paper as a whole (organization, form,
style, etc.). In "The Concept of Control in Teacher Response,"
Richard Straub describes the typical "directive" teacher:
She concentrates on formal propriety, using terse, sometimes
elliptical, comments that tell the student . . . in no uncertain terms what is
wrong and what must be changed. . . . [This teacher] has a definite and rather
narrow agenda for the writing . . . and she gives little attention to the
content of the writing. . . . It is a clear instance of a teacher's imposing an
idealized text on the student, her own model of what counts in a piece of
writing, and how that writing ought to appear, especially formally and
structurally, without any real concern for the writer's purposes and meaning.
(226)
Students, says Straub, can identify
a directive teacher by the many imperative comments found scattered throughout
the paper that attempt to "assert authority over the student (236).
Examples of these are: "Revise the opening to begin your argument,"
"Focus this paragraph on this argument and develop your case,"
"Make this into a full closing paragraph," and "Be sure you
focus each paragraph on its central idea" (236).
A teacher who is directive is
largely criticized by current composition theorists because in making these
imperative comments, and in correcting "errors," the students do not
learn from their own mistakes. Students do not "retain a greater
responsibility" for their writing and tend to recommit the same errors in
future papers (Straub 223). The directive teacher is also criticized because
he/she does not allow the writer to have a voice. The paper's sentences and
paragraphs are largely those created by the teacher. Thus, because the writing
is largely the teacher's words and voice, and not the student's, the student is
not able to engage in critical thought, thought that inspires him/her to, as
Peter Elbow says, "wallow in complexity." The student's writing may
be superficial and remain at a novice level.
A fourth type of response to avoid
is one that reflects the biases of the teacher. One specific study conducted by
Melanie Sperling investigated the commenting techniques a teacher used for what
she considered A to C students. The comments for the A student, Manda, were
much more positive and facilitative than for the C student, Mohan, where the
comments were negative and tended to be more directive. Overall, "to
Manda, the teacher-as-reader often showed herself as positive, peer-like, and
sympathetic to Manda's own world experience," whereas for Mohan, "the
teacher-as-reader often showed herself as negative, didactic, and focused on
mechanics instead of his text" (192).
Although the difference in comments
had to do somewhat with the different feedback that each student required,
Sperling indicates that the comments rather reflected what the teacher valued as
"interesting" writing versus "boring" writing (189-90).
Throughout the evaluation of the writing, the teacher often related her own
experience to the writer's experience. Interestingly, Manda's world experiences
were closer to the teacher's own than Mohan's, which possibly indicates that
the grade that resulted had to do with a subjective rather than an objective
view of the writing. The teacher was using an emotional bias to comment on and
grade students' papers. Furthermore, the result of these comments did not seem
to benefit Mohan in improvement of his writing. Sperling states that Mohan's
grade remained a C throughout the course, and the errors that he committed
never ceased (180). Therefore, this information encourages a teacher to
reconsider his/her way of perceiving a student's writing and understand that
different students will write differently because of heterogeneous experiences.
Just because a teacher cannot relate as well to one experience as to another
does not mean that the latter student deserves a lesser grade. As Sperling
suggests, we should "be conscious of the ways in which our readings of and
responses to student writing can vary from student to student and text to
text" and realize that "as we come to understand more about our
perspective as readers, we may have a touchstone for shaping different student
experiences with different writing types" (201).
Overall, teachers should take into
consideration different modes of response in order to reach beginning writing
students in the most productive and effective manner. Although research is
still needed to discover the long-term effect of marginal and end comments on
student writing, it is certain that for the present time, teacher response aids
a student in his/her revision, but only if it is worded carefully and
concretely. Research sheds light on what "good" or
"well-designed" advice may be according to beginning writing
students, and teachers should understand what "good advice" entails
when commenting on student papers. When advice is worded in an
"appealing" way and is thorough, students acknowledge that
"feedback and revision are valuable pedagogical tools" and that the
improvement of their drafts is a result of these tools (Ferris 316).
Works
Cited
Connors, Robert and Andrea Lunsford.
"Teachers' Rhetorical Comments on Student Papers." CCC 44
(1993): 200-18.
Ferris, Dana. "The Influence of
Teacher Commentary on Student Revision." Tesol Quarterly 31 (1997):
315-16.
Smith, Summer. "The Genre of
the End Comment: Conventions in Teacher Responses to Student Writing." CCC
48 (1997): 249-68.
Sperling, Melanie.
"Constructing the Perspective of Teacher-as-Reader: A Framework for
Studying Response to Student Writing." Research in the Teaching of
English 28 (1994): 175-207.
Straub, Richard. "The Concept
of Control in Teacher Response: Defining the Varieties of `Directive' and
`Facilitative' Commentary." CCC 47 (1996): 223-49.
Straub, Richard. "Students'
Reactions to Teacher Comments: An Exploratory Study." Research in the
Teaching of English 31 (1997): 91-119.
------------------------
Notes on the rhetoric of written
response
Jessica Mosher's research and advice
correspond closely to what the Writing Assistants have discovered in their
experience with The Write Project. Following are excerpts from a handout used
in the Writing Center as a guide to responding to student drafts in the
Project. Faculty may also find them helpful in responding to student papers.
·
Get a sense of the whole draft. Read
the introduction and conclusion, to find out where the paper is going and where
it gets to. Look for a topic or theme statement in each body paragraph. What is
the writer trying to do overall (audience and purpose)? How does that square
with the assignment?
·
Begin your response with a summary.
Tell the writer what you understand the draft to be saying. Having done that,
you'll find it much easier to write your response.
·
Try does/says analysis when you
can't quite put your finger on a problem. You can ask, "What is this
paragraph doing?" (role in the paper) and "What is this paragraph
saying?" (summary of topic) when paragraphs are not clear. If a paragraph
is underdeveloped or confusing, point the writer to another paragraph in the
draft that is clear and well developed, and suggest that the writer try
treating the problem paragraph in a similar way.
·
Write marginal comments at points
where you feel something needs to be said right there and not at the end. But
be careful not to insert too many comments, or the writer will just feel
overwhelmed.
·
End with a comprehensive summary of
strengths and weaknesses, plus a note of encouragement. This is your chance to
prompt the writer to action. A three-part end comment like the one suggested by
Erica Lindemann is a good format:
o
Devote at least one full sentence to
commending what you can legitimately praise; avoid undercutting the praise with
but (e.g., don't say "I like your introduction, but the paper is
disorganized").
o
Identify the problems the writer
most needs to work on, and explain why they make understanding the piece
difficult.
o
Suggest a goal for the writer to
work toward in the revision or the next assignment.
·
If there are several mechanical
problems or awkward sentences, comment on one paragraph as a sample, to show
the writer where the problems are and to suggest corrections. Tell the writer
that the rest of the draft needs similar editing.
·
Respond in the first person. The
"I" will make you sound like a reader, not just a grader. Instead of
saying, for instance, "This paragraph is confusing," write: "I'm
having trouble figuring out what this paragraph is saying."
·
Write text-specific comments.
Generic-sounding comments give the impression that you don't really care about
this draft or this student. For instance, "Your thesis is good"
sounds hollow. What is the thesis? What makes it good?
·
Praise specific things the writer
has done well. Do not give general praise like "Great paper!" or
"Excellent paper!" When you point out strengths, point to specific
places in the paper that illustrate those strengths.
·
Keep the tone positive and
encouraging. Find specific positive things to say. When you find something
good, comment on it right there where you find it, and also refer to it in your
general note at the end.
·
Keep the language literal. Avoid
metaphoric language. Metaphors can easily be misunderstood. Even a seemingly
obvious one like "You really hit the nail on the head here" is
uninformative. What literally corresponds in the writing to the nail? to the
head? to hitting? If the writer is ESL, your meaning might be totally obscure.
·
Avoid sarcasm and humor. Even the
most innocent humorous comment can be misunderstood as mocking or sarcastic.
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