Precis: “Responding to and Evaluating Student Writing” by Nancy Sommers

As teachers, we spend an extraordinary amount of time giving students feedback and comments on their papers, but we rarely think of how or why we do it – or if it even does any good. Are we really helping students or simply confusing the writing process and hindering their discursive development? A study of 35 first-year composition teachers (along with a computerized “Writer’s Workbench” to provide entirely disinterested and technical feedback for comparison) showed just how random and even angry instructor comments tend to be. It also highlighted a number of troubling feedback trends. Asked to provide feedback on the same first-draft papers, the teachers seemed to obscure rather than clarify the revision process.
Many instructors made comments on both content and grammar, confusing the student as to the focus of the revision. Grammar corrections should not be made on first drafts. Not only does it reinforce their perception that they simply need to go in and “fix” whatever the teacher pointed out, they interpret the surface-level markings to mean that the content and style of their paper is fine and, aside from some punctuation and spelling errors, they’ve finished the paper to completion. Furthermore, students should simply not be fixating on grammar at this stage of the drafting process.
Students were also given conflicting feedback about condensing and expanding their work. in the same paragraph, one of the teachers informed the student they needed to further research and develop an idea and then pointed out his/her wordiness. Neither suggestion/comment is given with any indication of which is the higher order concern. Thus, the students left to wonder whether to cut or add. In other areas, instructors failed to clarify their statements, writing vague statements like, “Think about your reader,” but not explaining what exactly is at issue. This helps no one.
Teachers should always strive to locate and discuss rhetorical and conceptual problems in students’ drafts – and help their students learn to find those problems for themselves. Additionally, it’s vital that there be harmony between in-class instruction and paper comments. Students need to understand that the revision process is not a matter of going point by point through the instructor’s comments and correcting them. It is a process of reinvention.