I have to admit, I left class yesterday feeling rather unsettled. Offering feedback on student writing is the most important responsibility of a writing teacher. Sommers makes this clear and I concur. What I don't agree with, however, is that the only way to offer feedback on student writing is through written comments. In fact, I believe with older students (high school and college level), relying solely on written comments can have deleterious effects on the progress of novice writers who lack confidence and skill. Being in the classroom for the last 15 years, I've seen many, many a student become dependent on teacher's comments. This results, as we discussed yesterday, in the student using such comments as a crutch, revising only what the teacher has asked and not taking ownership over revision (or writing, for that matter) in any way.
I've had far more success using the model we implemented for the book review. First, it holds writers and peer commentors accountable for the feedback they offer. Trust me . . . if students are not evaluated or otherwise held accountable for feedback, fewer than half of them will truly take the time necessary to read their peers' writing critically and offer thoughtful, appropriate comments. More importantly, however, this model fosters conversations about the writing. Written feedback is static and one-directional. Most students rarely take opportunities to follow up with teacher comments written on their work. So the comments are wrapped up in singular reader-centered context and devoid of any kind of writer-centered context. Of course students will misinterpret comments, not know what to do with them, etc.
Fostering a dialogic conversation about the writing, however, avoids such traps. Student and teacher are given the opportunity to collaborate on a piece of writing, problem solving together, exchanging ideas, asking for and offering clarification of those ideas, etc.
In accomplishing the above, too, I think the model I espouse also does something else that is important. It begins to transfer responsibility for learning and writing growth from the teacher to the student. When the semester/year ends, the student is on his/her own. If the teacher has not transferred that responsibility, any kind of progress that did take place could be lost. And that could be very frustrating for student writers.
I'm not saying that writing teachers should never offer written feedback on writing. But I do think that relying solely on, even privileging, written feedback, is short-sighted.
14 years ago
