Aliki P. Dragona
CWC Bibliography No. 2, 1992

A Brief Annotated Bibliography:
Commenting on Students' Papers

This bibliography summarizes five articles that offer practical and theoretical advice about responding to students' papers; all articles emphasize response strategies that show respect for the student's work and promote learning. Much of this advice may already be familiar to you, a confirmation of your practices. The first two essays offer step-by-step advice to faculty and TAs designing assignments and writing comments; the third essay, a product of collaboration of several writing-across-the-curriculum classes, can help chairs of departments or any faculty working with a group of readers or TAs establish common evaluation criteria; the fourth is useful for instructors who may have non-native speakers in their classrooms; and the last one functions as the theoretical backbone for the two sample comments. The University Writing Program has a large collection of articles and books on evaluating and responding to students' writing. You are welcome to consult our collection; we would be glad to photocopy those articles that interest you.

Larson, Richard. "Making Assignments, Judging Writing, and Annotating Papers: Some Suggestions." Training the New Teacher of College Composition. Ed. Charles W. Bridges. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 1986. 109-117.

Richard Larson's practical essay is very useful for new faculty members and those who have been teaching for years. His article can guide instructors through the steps of designing an assignment; evaluating the quality of the papers; and responding in an efficient way. Larson's suggested strategies are time-saving, efficient, and sensitive to students' rights and needs.

Writing the assignment:

1. Define in writing the task you are asking the students to do; students of different abilities within the same classroom should be able to perform it.
   
2. Try to give the students some idea of the steps they are to follow to complete the assignment.
   
3. Indicate the purpose of the assignment and attempt to design a topic that will be of interest to the students.

    

Evaluating the paper:

1. Determine if the paper exhibits the specific features required by the assignment.
   
2. See if the writer's purpose is stated in the introduction or ending of the paper.
   
3. Check if the different ideas developed in the paper are tied together, are explained adequately, and relate to the paper's purpose.
   
4. See if the paper is coherent, its reasoning valid, and the facts and data correct.
   
5. Determine if the style is clear and error-free for the most part.

    

The marginal comments should:

1. Point out a particular strength or weakness in the paper at the place it appears.
   
2. Ask for clarification of weak points in ways that encourage thinking (avoid using "?" and curt questions such as "How come?" or "What?").
   
3. Respond to style only when you can suggest a distinct improvement over the student's choice.
   
4. Draw attention to particularly successful areas of the student's paper.

    

The final comment should:

1. Indicate that you value and respect the student's work--it is the student's property and you can help to make it better by working along with the student rather than from your perspective only. In other words, you are trying to help the student understand and express in a better way what she or he is trying to communicate.
   
2. Show that you recognize and appreciate strengths (e.g., how well the paper has met the assignment's demands).
   
3. Demonstrate that you have evaluated the writing as a whole and have not merely focused on mistakes (it's best to concentrate on only one or two weaknesses, offering constructive criticism so that the student can improve in future assignments).

    

But the final comment should avoid:

4. Listing every grammatical or mechanical error (instead, describe the pattern of error).
   
5. Sarcasm at all costs or arguing with the student.
   
6. Addressing the student personally ["you..."]--best to direct comments at the paper ["this paper does not clearly show the relationship between X and Y..."].

   
   

Lindemann, Erika. "Making and Evaluating Writing Assignments." A Rhetoric for Writing Teachers. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1987. 191-224.

Lindemann's essay is a thorough discussion of how to write good assignments and evaluate them. The latter part of her essay provides instructors with a hands-on review of a number of written and oral strategies they can use to respond to students' writing. This is a good essay for overworked instructors or TAs who teach large classes. Apart from her suggestions on alternative non-written "responses" (e.g., taping comments or discussing them in office conferences), Lindemann breaks down the process of evaluating writing into several smaller steps so that the instructor can "assess" what the student needs to learn and plan how to best teach to those needs. The author also recommends that the instructor "keep notes to evaluate what's been learned and to plan future lessons" (216).

Reading the paper--"assess what the student needs to learn and plan what to teach and how" (216):

1. Read the paper once without marking anything.
   
2. Focus on one or two problems and attempt to understand where they stem from so that you can explain them to the student.
   
3. Assume that there is a reason behind the problem(s), even if it is not your kind of reasoning.
   
4. Evaluate what the student has done well.

    

Marking the paper--"conduct the lesson" (216):

1. Ask questions formulated in terms of "why," "how," and" what" to help the student reexamine the paper [e.g., "Why does the author argue X here?"]
   
2. Explain errors to students rather than simply label them.
   
3. Praise the student's work in full sentences rather than merely writing "good" or "nice"; remember to note improvement over previous papers.
   
4. Do not rewrite the student's work. You might model once, but overall it's best to note the problem and have the student examine it. Let the student know you are also willing to explain in conference.

    

Writing the endnote--"conduct the lesson" (216):

1. In a full sentence, commend the student for specific progress; try not to undermine the positive comment by joining it with a negative comment; e.g., "I like your introduction, but the paper is disorganized" (218).
   
2. Focus on one or two problems only and explain them clearly to the student.
   
3. Establish one or two goals for the next draft or paper.
   
4. Suggest specific ways the student can achieve these goals.

    

Mallonee, Barbara C., and John R. Breihan. "Responding to Students' Drafts: Inter-disciplinary Consensus." College Composition and Communication 36 (1985): 213-232.

This writing-across-the-curriculum article can prove useful for instructors in every discipline or professional school in the university who wish to use writing in their classes and respond to it successfully. Precisely because the suggestions the authors offer here derive from cross-curricular collaboration, they can be adopted by department chairs or faculty who work with a number of readers or TAs and wish to establish consistent evaluation criteria. These criteria can help faculty and assistants face the heavy load of paper marking efficiently and effectively. The attractive qualities of this essay lie in its practical suggestions, some handy checklists, and sample comments from several fields. The article describes in detail four areas where paper graders in every discipline should reach consensus before they evaluate papers:

"Make Some Basic Decisions About How to Deal with Errors--Both Mechanical and Factual" (214). Since different disciplines deal with errors in various ways, the authors suggest that a course with a writing component should have a policy about errors of both content and grammar, announced to the students clearly and well in advance of a writing assignment.

"Develop a Limited Terminology for Responding to Significant Features of Student Writing" (216).

If the instructors and students are to have a common understanding about good writing in the field, then there should be a common cross-disciplinary terminology that addresses the major characteristics of writing in the discipline (e.g.,"thesis-subthesis" and "evidence" for a history course with a writing component).

"Develop a Process of Response that is a Sensible Routine for Faculty to Follow" (221). The authors here maintain that faculty should use a specific evaluation routine when responding to papers. With such a routine, they can save themselves some time and offer unified responses to their students' writing. Mallonee and Breihan suggest that faculty develop common practices when evaluating student papers:

1. "Tailor Responses to a Specific Purpose" (221). In other words, if instructors are responding to a preliminary draft, then their comments should be geared toward revision only.
   
2. "Mark the Text and Margins of the First Drafts of Student Papers as Little as Possible" (222). Too many marginal comments, especially with early drafts, the authors say, tend to distract the student from seeing the paper as a whole. However, some marginal responses are useful in establishing patterns and help the instructor formulate the end comment (especially if dealing with the final version).
   
3. "Weigh the Paper Against a Checklist that Sets Priorities for Judgment" (223). Checklists are, of course, different in each course, but overall they are useful to both instructors and students because they establish a clear understanding about the strengths and weaknesses of the paper [the authors offer two sample checklists in the appendix].
   
4. "As a Final Step, Prepare a Summary End Comment that Schedules Revising Activities" (224). Individualized comments, Mallonee and Breihan contend, help instructors as well as students. Instructors are able to distance themselves from the paper and offer coherent suggestions for improvement, and students can see their writing in terms of a broader context.

    

"Decide That the Effort is Worth It" (228). Faculty who take the time to respond, the authors report, see significant improvement in their students' writing. Consequently, students who receive the kind of responses described above on their papers tend to trust their instructors' judgments and evaluations more.

Fathman, Ann K., and Elizabeth Whalley. "Teacher Response to Student Writing: Focus on Form Versus Content." Second Language Writing: Research Insights for the Classroom. Ed. Barbara Kroll. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1990. 178-91.

If you have non-native writers in your class, this is a useful article to consult on how to best help them improve their writing. This essay confirms current composition research which claims that generally students who write regularly, receive constructive feedback on both content and grammar, and revise their writing improve their writing skills. While this article will not teach you how to become an English as a Second Language (ESL) expert, it can show you how to help non-native writers improve in content and grammatical accuracy.

The most useful part of this essay focuses on a recent study about the correlation between instructors' responses and the improvement of non-native writers. Seventy-two non-native students in intermediate ESL composition classes at two different colleges were divided into four groups. Group 1 received no written comments; Group 2 received only grammar comments; Group 3 received comments on content only; Group 4 received comments on both content and grammar.

The results of the study show that positive comments, drawing attention to areas for revision, most affect non-native students' progress; general encouraging suggestions, especially when they grant the writer flexibility in deciding about revision, promote learning; locating and explaining the grammatical errors proves the best approach to improving grammatical accuracy; unmarked assignments (e.g., journals) are valuable for non-native writers--[and time-saving for the teachers]--because "they require minimal teacher time, help the student write more fluently, and may result in student improvement" (186). Instructors can decide at what stage of the writing process they wish to give the writers comments about grammar or if they wish to address both content and grammar at the same time. [Most writing specialists save grammatical comments for the final stages; unlike most native speakers, however, non-native writers often prefer and benefit from grammatical comments at all writing stages.]

[If you have non-native speakers in your classes, you may wish to consult:

• The University Writing Program, which provides consultations for faculty and TAs on evaluating students' writing;
• The Learning Skills Center, which pairs non-native students with ESL specialists;
• The Linguistics Department, which offers a series of writing classes for non-native speakers.]

Knoblauch, C.H., and Lil Brannon. "Responding to Texts: Facilitating Revision in the Writing Workshop." Rhetorical Traditions and the Teaching of Writing. Upper Montclair, NJ: Boynton/Cook, 1984. 118-51.

"Responding to Texts" combines an accessible theoretical discussion of evaluating students' writing with an excellent analysis of sample comments. Although it is theoretical and emphasizes multiple drafts in a workshop setting--[a difficult approach for faculty with large classes]--this essay should be useful to all faculty who either wish to adopt the workshop format or simply want to promote student learning through their comments. By responding as readers who try to understand what the students are trying to say, instructors can help them express their ideas better.

Knoblauch and Brannon argue that, when reading students' essays, faculty tend to ignore the writers' intentions "in favor of their own agendas" (119). Moreover, most instructors are preoccupied by grammar, so that they undervalue or neglect the meaning the students try to create. Often, instructors read their students' texts with their own "Ideal Texts" in mind, texts which usually do not match what the students have written. On the other hand, the students try to anticipate their teachers' expectations by producing writing they believe teachers want. In both cases, the students' intentions are compromised or ignored. To better evaluate student writing, instructors, Knoblauch and Brannon believe, should place the "emphasis . . . on the writer's understanding of the subject" (128) [emphasis added].

In order to be the kind of reader who focuses on students' meaning, instructors should keep in mind the following practices when responding to papers:

1. Teachers should not impose their own "Ideal Texts" on the writers; instead, they need to understand what the students are trying to communicate and help them express it appropriately. For example, in order to alert the writers to potential problems of clear communication without being authoritative, instructors can use peer review [where student-readers comment on a fellow writer's draft] to teach their students that other readers may not respond as expected to their essay; by discussing it, the writers can clarify their purposes and revise their writing accordingly.

    

2. It's preferable that instructors not judge the paper as a finished product. If they do, they might focus exclusively on grammatical and mechanical problems, instead of writing comments that will help the student continue to think about the subject.

    

3. Teachers should try to respond to writing as readers who are trying to work with the writers' original intentions; e.g., "Here's what your choices have caused me to think you're saying--if my response differs from your intent, how can you help me see what you mean?" (129).

    

4. Instructors should offer "facilitative" rather than "directive" commentary. "Facilitative" commentary allows the writer to consider their reader's comments and to rethink and revise their writing accordingly. On the other hand, "directive" commentary tends to give prescriptive, authoritative suggestions that match the reader's, not the writer's, intentions.

    

Aliki P. Dragona
CWC Bibliography No. 2, 1992