Commenting on 12 Readers

When I sat down this past weekend to work on the 12 Readers Project I did not think that it would be so time consuming to complete the first two steps. I figured it would be easy to finish in a short amount of time seeing as there were only two essays, however I had a rude awakening when it came to commenting on the first essay. I read it through more than four times and though I knew internally what I thought was wrong with the paper I couldn't figure out how to put it down as comments. I found myself wanting to just break out the red pen and get to work marking and crossing, slashing and cutting, while rewriting the paper to my liking. This red pen method just felt so comfortable and safe for me that it took all my will to follow Lindemann. I will not say that I am a fan of the red pen method but this assignment has shown me that it is easy and rather comfortable from my perspective as a teacher. Just identifying the errors in a paper in a structured and established way is far less challenging than actually identifying the content errors in a paper. By the time I finished the first essay all i had to show was two check marks and some forced commentary at the end of the paper. It wasn't until the second essay that I felt more comfortable commenting. This may have a lot to do with the difference in the essays themselves as I felt the second one better handled the assigned topic but also it may be the fact that I had two essays to compare. I have found it hard to individually grade assignments, especially when writing is involved, without comparing the student's work to each other. Its almost as if there has to be some standard to live up to before a grade can be assigned to every one. I know in this case reading the second essay made it easier for me to go back and comment on the first essay more effectively .