In her article Responding to Student Writers university professor, Nancy Sommers discusses the topic of teachers responding to student papers. In the beginning, she explains that this process is time-consuming and ineffective. While it is the most significant part of a teachers job research has shown that this action has little to do with student success in writing and the process overall is misunderstood. This misunderstanding is the main focus of her article.
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Sommers writes that teachers comment on student papers for two main reasons.Â
"we comment on student writing to dramatize the presence of a reader, to help our students to become that questioning reader themselves, because, ultimately, we believe that becoming such a reader will help them to evaluate what they have written and develop control over their writing." (pg. 148)
"we comment on student writing because we believe that it is necessary for us to offer assistance to student writers when they are in the process of composing a text, rather than after the text has been completed." (pg. 149)
With these two reasons in mind, it is important to know that teachers commenting on student papers is a well-intended practice necessary to create great writers. Often times students believe that their writing communicates well to the reader in sound reasoning and logic, however, it is not always the case. So it is important as teachers to make those comments on student papers so that they will write more effectively, stick to the topic and have an intelligible paper overall. Even so, Sommers argues that the way teachers comment on student papers is vague and lack direction.
Responding to Student Writing- Nancy Sommers: by Kaveena Bullock
1. Teachers comments can take students’ attention away from their own purposes in writing a particular text and focus that attention on the teacher’s purpose in commenting.
2. Most teachers’ comments are not text-specific and could be interchanged, rubber-stamped, from text to text.
3. Our comments need to be suited to the draft we are reading (Sommers, 154).
4. The key to successful commenting is to have what is said in the comments and what is done in the classroom mutually reinforce and enrich each other (Sommers, 154).
Tutoring v. Editing by Christina Masucci
I was intrigued by the thought of reviewing past writing pieces, so I thought I’d do the same. I work in the writing center on my campus, so I’ve been taught a particular method of tutoring/proofreading. It’s not explicitly editing, and… I’m actually interested in seeing the difference between how I would review/comment on a paper based on my training and how I would actually brutally destroy thoroughly edit it.
As such, I reached deep into the bowels of my flash drive, back into the good old days (lie) of middle school, and grabbed a paper I did on The Hobbit. Below, you’ll find images (identifiable through the yellow highlights) of how I would review a paper for the writing center, and one image (identifiable through the green suggestion marks) of how I would edit a paper myself.
From the perspective of a lazy student, the best response I have ever received on a writing assignment was a simple check mark. It was straight to the point; I had written an adequate paper and no further revision was needed. I could just move on. Looking back, from the perspective of a graduate student who has also worked as a teacher, it was in fact the worst response I could have received because it practically meant nothing. Giving a simple thumbs up to a student’s work is as dismissive as patting someone on the back without giving a thought. It could be satisfying at the moment but it does not introduce anything for your mind to ponder on. Contentment is often defined as a disease by people because it leaves no room for a desire or encouragement that could lead to any sort of improvement. Therefore, students who are learning how to write should not be positioned to feel content; they should be faced with challenges and offered motivation by their instructors to overcome them. It’s not the laziness but the struggle that will increase one’s skill in writing.
