Hooray for Unabashed Criticism?

Thanks to the Lindemann chapter on responding to student writing, I find myself struggling somewhat to not make useless comments for responding to papers (i.e. on the Twelve Reader's Reading excerpt). I also find myself recognizing that somewhere around 90% of the comments I've ever gotten back I would consider useless. It's amazing to me (and very ironic) that as teachers, we often complain that our students are being vague in their papers, and yet we're extremely vague in the responses we give back. I had to laugh (mostly to meliorate my disappointment) at a paper I got back in one of my classes because the comments fell right along the lines that Lindemann made. Add that to the fact that there's no rewrite, and I am seriously wondering why I even bothered reading the comments, other than to "figure out the teacher."

One of the things I've discovered works fairly well and that I've been playing with is taking more of a Socratic approach--commenting in the form of questions to lead the student to discover the solutions they need to find. This method especially makes sense to me if one is making the effort to help students recognize "appropriateness" rather than "correctness." By asking questions, it helps them think about why they made the choices they did in using the language they used. Instead of them thinking you're just telling them they're wrong, I think it would give the impression that you're offering them alternative solutions.

Granted, this method could blow up in my face. Right now I am imagining a student deciding that since they only got questions leading them in a different direction they don't have to actually change anything. Some of this problem could possibly be alleviated by actual conferences with the student. In that sort of a setting, you could impress on them that it might be less of a choice to change things than they might initially want, but at the same time, it could let them know that they have multiple options for making more appropriate choices.

I also feel that students need to be trained to read comments properly, so even spending five minutes with them during a class session would help this. Also, as a student gets more accustomed to your comments, you might have more freedom to comment the way you want. That doesn't give you freedom to write useless comments that tell the student as little as their paper tells you. Food for thought.