Teachers' Responses to Students' Writing

Question: How can teachers improve their understanding of students’ understanding of the teachers’ responses to their writing? [Sound like gibberish? It isn’t, ]

Answer/quote: “…has led me to two research questions for the current study: 1) What are students thinking as they are reading and considering their teachers’ feedback on their writing? 2) How do students react to conversational and nonconversational comments their teachers write on their work? Perhaps if writing instructors better understand the thoughts that come to their students’ minds as they are reading their teachers’ written advice, they might develop a clearer sense of which types of comments stimulate students to think critically about their writing and which types of comments students scan dismissively. This awareness has the potential to help teachers make better decisions about how to compose commentary on their students’ work.” P. 274.

“By providing a valued space for students to pose questions and assert opinions about their writing and our feedback, we allow them to practice scrutinizing and contesting suggestions on their work. In short, we must ask students how we’re doing when we respond to their writing. Most importantly, we must continue to study writing responses using methodologies that examine the situated ways students read and use our feedback to provide greater insight into what the student interlocuters in writing response dialogue would like to add to a decades-long conversation.” P. 289.

Comment: I think the most important sentence in this article is the following: “In short, we must ask students how we’re doing when we respond to their writing.” The author suggests inviting students to comment on our comments on their writing. RayS.

Title: “Do You Care to Add Something? Articulating the Student Interlocutor’s Voice in Writing Response Dialogue.” Diana Lin Awad Scrocco. Teaching English in the Two-Year College (March 2012), 274-292.