12 readers project

Here is what I have thus far on my paper: Having completed The Twelve Readers Project, I am now aware of how I should respond to student writing. I used to have a method where I would mark-up everything that was wrong with the paper and try to provide as much feedback as possible to the student. Upon reading some of the responses that Donna and David received, I see that I have been going about it the wrong way. I have realized that I might be alienating the writer and confusing them as to what the next step in the writing process should be. The Sommer’s article has also made it clear to me that good feedback is one that helps the writer.

When I first read David and Donna’s paper I couldn’t withhold the urge to correct the prompts. I have always believed that I am a better critic than I am a writer, and this notion of myself was quite difficult to put aside as I read the student papers. Upon my first reading of ‘The Four Seasons” by David B., I marked up the paper with the typical comments teachers use on student papers. I wrote, “needs to develop theme better in terms of personal feelings to this place,” “formal vs. colloquial writing,” “elaborate,” and “explain.” David’s paper was filled with “explain,” “elaborate,” and “how so? More details.” I didn’t think anything of these comments when I wrote them down, they were simply expressing my first thoughts upon reading this work. I also did some corrections in terms of grammar, essentially, the comments on the paper looked like those of White (48).

When I first read Donna R.’s “The Right to Pray,” I couldn’t help but to red-mark it. I found this essay harder to comment on mainly because of all of the errors within the sentences. I had a lot more suggestions for Donna than I did for David, and I think this was the case mainly because Donna’s paper had more errors. “The Right to Pray” was also a more difficult paper than “The Four Seasons,” and I think that this is why I wrote more comments on this paper, similar to Hull’s commentary (145). The comments that I wrote were, “good point” and “elaborate more,” but I wrote them throughout the paper. Donna’s paper was difficult for me to understand mainly because it dealt with a complex topic and was poorly written. I believe that I help Donna’s paper to higher standards than I did David’s, and so, I think that Donna’s paper is the weaker of the two.

After completing this step and taking the Lindemann approach to commenting on student writing, the comments I made where quite different. The comments on David’s paper were no longer what Nancy Sommers calls “vague directives that are not text-specific” (152). My initial comments were quite vague and lacked direction or purpose, but following Lindemann’s procedures, I noticed that my comments had a purpose and more useful for the student. Lindemann in “Teaching through Comments” provides a list of steps that teachers should follow when commenting on student writing (239). I believe that Lindemann’s 8th and 9th step, where she explains that we should not do the student’s work and where she asks that we make “praises” that are detailed with references towards the content (241).These two steps helped me guide my comments towards helping the students develop the essays while it also provided them with positive reinforcement. Lindemann’s guide also helped me focus on specifics and ask myself questions about the text, this was mainly the case because I became actively engaged in the student’s writing and not in what I wanted to hear.

In “Responding to Student Writing,” Nancy Sommers explains that when teachers respond to a student’s writing, the student is less concerned with the paper and more focused pleasing the teacher (149).She explains that the “teacher appropriates the text from the student by confusing the student’s purpose in writing the text with her own purpose in commenting” (149). This occurs because the student, in the revising process, makes the changes that the teachers asks for instead of focusing on the content of the paper. This has happened to me many times, I would get feedback on my paper that lead me to discuss other topics that I didn’t want to write on. Instead of focusing on my topic, I would follow the teacher’s instructions and take the paper in another direction. What Sommers says is important, mainly because the student gets sidetracked and loses focus of his/her paper. I noticed that with the initial comments I made to Donna’s and David’s paper, I was more focused on what I wanted to read and not overly concerned with what they wanted to say.

Following Lindemann’s guidelines for commenting on student writing, I noticed that my comments were more concept based. I no longer was asking the typical cookie-cutter questions, but was really focused on specifics. My sentences were complete to the point where the student can easily understand what I’m asking, and were less directive. Upon my reading of the 12 readers commentary on David’s paper I noticed the harsh criticism of the paper and their instructions as to what David should do. I took offense to many of the comments that I read, mainly after reading the Sommers article, because I felt that the commentary was too critical and harsh. I particularly disliked Anson’s approach, I felt it was out of line by questioning the writer’s “credibility” and seemed to be criticizing the student’s voice as being too “romantic” and “exaggerative” (58). I felt the same way about Elbow’s response to Donna’s paper, he was too critical and attacked the writer; thus, discouraging and alienating her (137).