Transcript Responding to Student Writing

Hiram College WAC
Based upon work by Erika Lindemann, Donald
McAndrew, and Thomas Reigstad
Reasons for evaluating student writing
 Administrative:
 Grading
 Tracking students
 Placing students in English courses
 Evaluation and Research
 Measure student growth over time
 Determining effectiveness of teacher or writing program
 Measuring group differences
 Instructional
 Making an initial diagnosis of the students’ writing problems
 Guiding and focusing feedback to student writers as they progress
through an English course.
A Hard Fact
 Some studies suggest that comments do very little to
improve student writing.
 So why do it? And how should we do it?
 We do it in part because students feel validated by
comments. Commenting, it seems, is our job as
writing teachers.
Follow two caveats:
1) The comments must be focused.
2) Students also have opportunities to apply
criteria for good writing to their own work.

This means focusing, again, on higher order
concerns (argument, ideas, organization,
structure), and using creative approaches to deal
with lower order concerns (grammar, spelling,
usage).
Teach through comments in three steps:



Assess what the student needs to learn, as well as
what they have done well
Plan your approach to the lesson
Conduct the lesson
Assess
 Read the paper without marking it (quickly).
 Attempt to identify the one or two issues you want to
address in your comments.
 What was the student attempting to do? How did it go
wrong, and how could they get back on track?
Plan
 Make some notes (possibly on a different sheet of
paper), about no more than two major issues that you
wish to address.
 How do you want to address these issues?
 What could the student do to improve their essay?
Comment
Within the essay:
 Use leading questions, but avoid questions that prompt
simple yes/no answers. For example, use questions that
begin with Why, How, or What:
 How does this idea connect to the rest of the ideas in the essay?
 Why have you placed this point here? Could it work somewhere
else, and how would it fit there?
 What do you want the reader to understand in this paragraph?
Why is this detail important?
Comment
When commenting on what the student has done well,
be specific as well:
 Instead of “Good!” try “Good transition between these
ideas”
 or “I like how you bridge the gap between these
points.”
Endnote
 Provide a quick summary of what you feel the
student is attempting to achieve in the essay, and
then go on to discuss where they succeed and
where they need work.
 Try to limit yourself to no more than two
compliments and two focal areas for improvement.
 Make a “cut and paste” list of common responses
to work students need to do for improvement.
Grammar
 Again, identify focal problems rather than all of
the problems in an essay.
 You can try color coding with highlighter to
identify recurring grammar problems, and have
the students correct these errors. This must be
accompanied by an explanation of how to fix the
problem.
 Better, have students write a short (1 page)
response about their particular grammar foible
(defining it), why it is incorrect, and how they can
correct it.
Notes to Self: Improve the
Assignment
 What works about the assignment itself? What
doesn’t work? How did students match or not match
your expectations?
 As you grade, take notes on your assignment sheet
and on the syllabus as to how to better approach the
assignment next time. What would you change in the
assignment? The activities that lead up to the
assignment? How would you make those changes?
References
 Donald A. McAndrew and Thomas J. Reigstad.
Tutoring Writing: A Practical Guide for Conferences.
Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 2001. Print.
 Erika Lindemann. A Rhetoric for Writing Teachers. 3rd
ed. New York: Oxford UP, 1995. Print.