Responding to Student Writing
Students’ Responses to Teachers’ Comments
Spadiel and Stiggins’s study (1990) revealed how students misread and reacted to teachers’ comments (pp. 85-87).
“Needs to be more concise”
- Confusing. I need to know what the teacher means specifically.
- This is an obvious comment.
- I’m not Einstein. I can’t get everything right.
- I thought you wanted details and support.
- Define “concise.”
- Vague, vague.
“Be more specific”
- I tried and it didn’t pay off.
- It’s going to be too long then.
- I try, but I don’t know every fact.
- You be more specific.
“You haven’t really thought this through”
- That is a mean reply.
- I guess I blew it.
- How do you know what I thought.
“Try harder”
- I did try!
- Maybe I am trying as hard as I can.
- Baloney! You don’t know how hard I tried.
- This kind of comment makes me feel really bad and I’m frustrated!
Source: John C. Bean, Engaging Ideas: The Professor’s Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass
Publishers, 1996.
Writing-to-learn activities and strategies differ substantially in means and ends from traditional, formal writing. The following comparison highlights a few of these differences.
| Traditional Assignments (Displaying Knowlege) | Writing to Learn (Processing Knowlege) |
| Conveys already “known” concepts or knowledge | Conveys thinking in process or discovery |
| Writing to test (is the student’s thinking right or wrong) | Writing to think (Intellectual engagement is goal; error is a natural part of learning) |
| Asks students to be sure about what they write (what’s your thesis?) | Allows students to voice and explore questions |
| Assigned as homework (often a relatively lengthy paper, report, or exam) | Process More Process (writing=thinking=more thought) |
| Students see writing assignments as penalty situations (writing is a burden and test of knowledge) | Assignments impromptu, often completed in class, may also be homework, often short (less than a page) |
| Graded on A/B/C/D/F basis by teacher (usually means heavy investment of teacher’s and student’s time) | Students see writing as a means or helpful to support thinking about new material |
| Focus on the grades, and what has already been learned, not the current process of learning | Usually ungraded, but credit given or not given based on clear criteria (i.e., less formal grading by teachers, and students focus on learning not grades) |
If writing IS thinking then constructing writing-to-learn activities serves our students’ learning by asking them to push beyond a surface understanding, by asking them to engage in a process of knowledge making, by asking them to think through a variety of perspectives, theories, or ideas, and by taking at least some responsibility for their own learning.
Commenting on Student Papers
Commenting on Student Papers
Commenting, when done well, coaches revision. Revision leads our students to understanding more deeply what it is they want to say. Revision leads our students to a better understanding of what readers need and want. Revision is a higher order thinking and will often influence students’ abilities to think more critically.
What are Some Strategies for Commenting on Student Papers?
- Comment early enough that your students have time to reflect upon and make revisions with your comments as their guide (at least a week ahead of the due date).
- Look for the promise of a draft rather than its mistakes. See yourself as responding rather than correcting.
- Rather than commenting copiously on everything, limit your comments to two or three things the writer should work on that would immediately strengthen the draft—perhaps in dramatic ways.
- Develop a hierarchy of concerns descending from higher-order issues (ideas, organization, development, etc.) to lower-order issues (sentence correctness, spelling, grammar, mechanics, etc.). Proceed to the lower-order concerns only when a student draft is having some success with the higher-order concerns. (Sometimes, depending on the student, it is appropriate to address some of each in a more integrated manner.)