Responding to Student Writing

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Responding to Student Writing

• What Theory and Research Tell Us

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Response to student writing is

• Dependent on our context, temperament, and mood
• Dependent on our knowledge of different students
  and their writing
• Widely varied in method, style, and focus
• A good place to reflect on our values and
  work as teachers

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Responding as an interested reader keeps
responsibility with the writer.

• When we rewrite or fix the text, we ask the
  student to relinquish responsibility for it
  (Brannon and Knoblauch Sommers).
• A collaborative approach in which the teacher
  responds to drafts as an interested reader
  encourages students to realize their own purposes
  and to retain responsibility for their
  development as writers.

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Encouraging revision enhances learning.

• Responses to student writing prove most
  beneficial when each text is itself conceived as
  a work in progress amenable to revision
  (Horvath).
• Formative evaluation treats the text as a draft
  to be revised, offering suggestions, questions,
  reminders, and assignments, placing learning with
  the student.

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Revisers are better writers.

• Research shows that students who revise produce
  better work than nonrevisers.
• A willingness to revise and the nature and extent
  of revision distinguish skilled from unskilled
  writers (Beach Bridwell Faigley and Witte
  Murray Sommers Stallard).

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Limiting and sequencing responses supports
learning.

• Sequencing responses from large-scale to surface
  feature problems allows students to improve their
  writing by working through a series of manageable
  tasks (Flower and Hayes Sommers).

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Praise reduces writing apprehension.

• Praise allows student to experience success with
  writing.
• Gee found that students who received no comments
  or only criticism
• developed significantly more negative attitudes
  toward writing than those who received only
  praise.
• wrote significantly shorter papers after four
  weeks.

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How we respond to errors requires conscious
reflection.

• We notice and mark errors to varying degrees
  depending on
• textual and contextual factors,
• inherited practices,
• personal standards,
• beliefs about the expectations of other faculty
  or future employers, and
• a host of other factors.

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How we respond to errors requires conscious
reflection.

• Practices range from minimal marking to extensive
  correction.

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Questions for reflection on errors

• How much does error stand out in our own usual
  reading of a students text?
• Of all the possible errors to identify, why
  these?
• Of all the ways in which to identify or respond
  to errors, why this way?
• Of the stages during the writing process when
  error could play a role, why at this point?
• Is the response designed simply to identify the
  error, or to help the student fix or investigate
  it? (Anson)

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Modes of response (Straub)

• Corrections e.g., adding recreational
  in front of drugs.
• Commands Stick with the third person dont
  get into your own experience.
• Advice Id consider starting the essay here.
  Or Maybe it would help to just talk out those
  ideas or make some sort of list.

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Modes of response

• Evaluation It seems to me you dont go far
  enough into this point.
• Closed questions Which drugs did you have in
  mind? Such questions indirectly ask the student
  to consider certain revisions.
• Open questions What other things would you
  consider dangerous to society? Should they be
  illegal? Such questions allow the student more
  room to figure things out on her own.

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Modes of response

• Reflections (we become a sounding board)
• Your first argument deals with the financial
  reasons for legalizing drugs. (interpretive)
• In academic writing, the trick is to express
  your opinion with authority. (instructional)
• I think Im following your point, but Im having
  to do a lot of filling in. (reader response)

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Modes of response

• Praise
• According to Paul Diederich, ETS, Noticing and
  praising whatever a student does well improves
  writing more than any kind or amount of
  correction it is especially important for the
  less able writers who need all the encouragement
  they can get (qtd. in Daiker).
• Yet studies consistently show that our criticism
  far outweighs our praise.

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Examples of praise

• Your thesis is interesting and clear.
• There is much that is strong here your sense of
  detail is good and your ideas are insightful.
• Your paper is well organized, with some nice
  paragraph transitions.
• Effective closing image good.
• You have a vigorous and full vocabulary.

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Response strategies from the experts

1. Create an informal, spoken
   voice, using everyday language.
2. Tie your comments back to the students
   own language on the page, in
   text-specific comments.
3. Focus on the writers evolving meanings and play
   back their way of understanding the text.

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Response strategies from the experts

• 4. Make critical comments, but cast
  them in the larger context of help or
  guidance.
• 5. Provide direction for the students revision,
  but dont take control over the writing or
  establish a strict agenda for that revision.
• 6. Elaborate on the key statements of your
  response.

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The bottom line

• Comments that recognize the integrity of the
  student as a learning writer and that look to
  engage him in substantive revision are better
  than those that do not (Straub).