Response to Student Writing

Materials from the University of Hawaii and Wright State University offer excellent tips for responding to student writing and handling the paper load.

Overall, it's useful for professors to consider the kinds of feedback they find most helpful on their own work. As writers, what do teachers value most from readers? Here are 5 guidelines gleaned from professors' experiences in WAC programs.

(1) Establish a hierarchy, or priority, for your responses. Some well-meaning readers tend to mark every error they see, which is time-consuming (and can be frustrating). It is also so overwhelming to writers that they tend to tune out because they don't know what to focus on. If responses aren't focused, the improvement may not be, either.

(2) Respond copiously to drafts, not to final products. Especially if a paper is due at the semester's end, most students will focus on the grade, and not the comments, so the time spent responding can be wasted on some writers. If a writer views comments in terms of being able to improve, then the response has a specific purpose and it is time well spent.

(3) Contextualize error. Line editing can be a useful teaching tool, but it makes little sense to correct errors in grammar and style (and some teachers don't distinguish between the two) if a piece of writing has global problems to begin with (it lacks a main point or a focus or the proper research was never conducted in the first place). Effective responders use line editing purposefully, and explain to their students how to interpret their (sometimes idiosyncratic) editing. As important, errors in grammar and style are often the result of a student's lack of planning and drafting. Providing students with opportunities for both will probably decrease errors significantly. Moreover, many professors count error the most in high stakes, or significant assignments, not in less formal writing where they want to encourage students to plan, explore, and synthesize ideas.

(4) Consider the tone of comments. Research suggests that college professors can be overly negative in their commenting style. Pointing to areas of strength tells a student writer what to keep or build on--what works for a reader.

(5) Create well-defined assignments. Research also consistently ties the quality of assignments to the quality of readers' response. Open-ended assignments may encourage a student's creativity, but they are harder to grade if other sorts of supports aren't present from the beginning. A well-defined assignment usually embeds the criteria for evaluation in the prompt.