Responding to Student Writing

1. Responding to Student Writing Hiram College WAC Based upon work by Erika Lindemann, Donald McAndrew, and Thomas Reigstad

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. Follow two caveats: • The comments must be focused. • 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).

5. 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

6. 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?

7. 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?

8. 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?

9. 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.”

10. 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.

11. 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.

12. 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?

13. 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.