As we've discussed, responding to student writing allows you to work with the individual student, focusing on that students individual strengths and weaknesses. It also allows you to reinforce the idea that there is a reader, that writing is done to be shown to and responded to by readers. One of the foremost theorists and educators on the subject of responding to student writing is Nancy Summers. I want to go through a few of the key ideas in her book responding to student writers. Note that her last noun is not writing but writers. This echoes her first key point, which is too many comments are written to the paper, not to the student. We've talked about this in other context throughout the courses in the specialization, how we are teaching students and our dialogue should be with students. Yes, we're responding to a student's paper. But that students paper is simply a group of words the student happened to put down during a particular time in their development as writers, students, and human beings. Our concern should be with the development of our students. That's why we don't want to become editors. We don't want to fix our students papers to make them more effective. We're capable of doing that. We're all good enough writers and teachers, but it doesn't help the student improve as a writer if we take it upon ourselves to improve the student's product. Summer says, our role as teachers is to engage with students by treating them as apprentices, offering honest critique compared with instruction. The students role is to be open to the teacher's comments, reading and hearing these responses not as personal attacks or as isolated moments. But as instructive and portable lessons to take with them to the next draft or assignment. One of her most challenging ideas is that when it comes to responding, less is more. I call this challenging because we might feel that we aren't doing our jobs, if we don't mark everything we notice in the student paper that needs additional work. But the fact is that, students can only work effectively to improve a few things in each draft. Over-commenting overwhelms both the student and the teacher. The writing across the curriculum clearinghouse has produced a series of suggestions, for responding to student writing that emphasizes the same idea and their suggestions. The authors point out that no matter how much you want to improve student writing, students can only take in so much Information about a draft at one time. Writers tend to feel overloaded quickly by accessibly detailed feedback about their writing. Moreover, because most writing can be considered work in progress, commenting exhaustively on every feature of a draft is counterproductive. Too many comments can make student writers feel as if the teacher is taking control of the draft and cutting off productive avenues for revision. And often problems in a draft are problems because these student knows their problems, but just hasn't had enough time to focus on correcting them. The advice that these authors give is to focus your energy when commenting. Or as summer says, prioritize your comments, prioritizing your comments can achieve two important goals. You leave students in control of their writing so that they can consider revising. And as teachers, you get a sense of tackling the most important elements of a draft rather than getting bogged down in detail that students might just ignore. The white clearinghouse article was suggested hierarchy of rhetorical concerns. And you can see here the top line, the most important concerns Audience, Purpose, Occasion. The next line Focus: Thesis, Reasons, Unity and Coherence. Then the 3rd line Development: Reasons, Evidence and Explanation. The 4th line Style/Mechanics/Conventions and Readability, Care and Polish Patterns of Error. So that when you're looking particularly at an early draft, start at the top. The audience, who is the writers audience? Is this an academic audience? What are the expectations or purpose? Is this piece of writing intended to inform, analyze, explore, summarize, argue or focus? What idea, proposal, proposition or experience does the text take as its central concern for coherence? How easily can the reader move from sentence to sentence as well as from beginning to end of paragraphs, sections in the text? Overall is the writing organized in a coherent way? Do transitions guide the reader through the logic of the paper or development? What kinds of evidence does the audience expect? Does the context demand clarification through examples, data etc. For style and conventions, what style is appropriate for the context in terms of audience and purpose? What register or level of formality is appropriate? For instance, can the writer use I in this context? And you can see that for example, you can't answer the question. Is the style appropriate for the context in terms of audience and purpose, until you have clearly established what is the audience and purpose. Summers also points to the importance of helping students learn how to understand and use your comments. Many students aren't used to reading comments closely. They'll flip right to the grade and give the comments only cursory attention. Or if the comments appear on a draft that hasn't been graded, they might not know how to apply those comments to revise. On occasion, I would ask my students to read my comments on a draft. And then write me a paragraph explaining what they intended to try and accomplish in the next draft, based at least in part on the comments I provided. On other occasions, I've given students back a graded paper with comments, but without the grade. I've asked students then to read my comments and tell me what they think the grade is, that their paper earned based on what they understand from my comments. This also helps me to understand how my comments are being received. We'll continue this discussion in the next video, responding to student writers, Part 2.
