Download responding to student writing

RESPONDING TO STUDENT WRITING:
WHAT FEEDBACK IS MOST VALUABLE?
“Writing can be best understood as a process of critical thinking.”1
1.
The role of writing in your course
 Formal (evaluate)
 Informal (need not evaluate; can be integrated into formal tasks)
2.
Assignment design: “design backwards”
 Link assignments to course outcomes
 Assess student capabilities (see “Novice vs. Expert Composing Behaviors”) at the outset;
identify issues that are individual vs. those that require group skill development
 “Scaffold” assignments, moving from where students are to end-of-course objectives; use
several shorter assignments, rather than one major paper
 Provide clear assignment guidelines (see “Writing Assignment Checklist”); better assignments
yield better papers (“the use of writing to promote deep learning depends less on the
amount of writing assigned in a course than on the design of the writing assignments
themselves,” Bean, p. 97)
 Provide rubric or grading criteria; practice evaluation of a sample essay
 Provide models (may analyze sample papers in class)
 Guide students’ writing processes (e.g., require reader before/after purpose statements,
thesis statements, bibliographies, outlines, drafts)
 Include metacognitive activities (e.g., reflections on writing process, reflections on progress
since earlier assignments, goals set and achieved in paper)
3.
Strategies for responding to student writing
 You have to survive your life
 You are the students’ writing “coach” – not their editor; your purpose is to grow the writer,
not perfect the paper
 Prompt responses maximize student learning
 Prioritize issues – higher order concerns first (e.g., meets assignment guidelines,
demonstrates clear thinking, provides sufficient evidence, has logical organization), then
latter order concerns (pattern errors vs. careless editing)
 Consider Hairston’s categories of errors
 Focus feedback on content and assignment objectives – identify one or two most critical
aspects student must master for future assignments
 Consider carefully structured peer review
 Schedule individual conferences , a better time investment than “correcting”; personal
interaction motivates and guides students’ growth; balance encouragement with critique
 Consider “R” when paper does not yet meet assignment requirements
 Invest maximum time in formative feedback, minimal time in summative feedback
1
John C. Bean, Engaging Ideas: The Professor’s Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and
Active Learning in the Classroom. 2nd ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2011.
Writing Assignment Checklist
This writing assignment has the following:
Clearly stated purpose
Clear connection to course outcomes
Clearly identified genre
Identified audience (if other than faculty)
Discussion of appropriate topic choices
Outline of the process for successful completion (e.g., topic approval, drafts, research notes,
recommended/required sources)
Specified expectations (e.g., due date, length, formatting conventions, type and number of sources
to be used, use of tables or figures)
How assignment is to be submitted (e.g., paper, electronically)
_ Whether paper is to be submitted to turnitin.com
Information about peer review (if applicable)
Grading criteria (or a rubric)
Stipulations regarding late or incomplete papers
Information about where to find models (e.g., textbook) or example papers students may use to
better understand the task
Hairston’s Categories of Error 2
Status-marking Errors
Nonstandard verb verbs (brung instead of brought, had went instead of had gone)
Lack of subject-verb agreement (he don’t instead of he doesn’t)
Double negatives
Objective pronoun as subject (him and Richard were hired)
Very Serious Errors
Sentence errors (fragments, run-ons)
Non-capitalization of proper nouns
Non-status-marking subject-verb agreement errors
Would of instead of would have
Insertion of comma between the verb and its complement
Lack of parallelism
Faulty adverb forms (often with verbs of the senses: looks, tastes, smells, sounds, feels; e.g., feels badly)
Use of transitive set for sit
Serious Errors
Verb form errors
Dangling modifiers
I as object pronoun
Lack of commas to set off interrupters such as however
Lack of commas in a series
Tense switching
Use of a plural modifier with a singular noun (these kind of errors)
2
Maxine Hairston, “Not all Errors Are Created Equal,” College English, 1981, 43(8), 794-806.