Giving Students Comments

 In writing instruction, commenting on students’ work is crucial for making progress in their writing ability. Yet, commenting is an extremely complex task because it can frequently lead to confusing the student, which does more harm than good. I know this to be true because, in a writing class that I help assist with teaching, I found my comments to be problematic for a student whom I thought I was helping. To clarify, all of the students were working on their papers during class. Since they were still in the earlier stages of writing, students’ ideas were not as concrete and developed as papers are in the later stages. Students were collaborating with their peers, but there were a small portions of students who working alone. I noticed a particular student who was working by herself. Her one finger was constantly twirling her hair as her other hand was lightly banging a pen on her forehead. I decided to sit down and see if I could help. At first, she was trying to explain to me what her paper was about, but I told her that I should read her paper before anything else. I know a crucial part of being a good writer is being a good reader. Nancy Sommers in her text, Responding to Student Writing, describes how effective reading skills are crucial for a writer when she says, “we comment on student writing to dramatize the presence of a reader, to help our students to become that questioning reader themselves, because, ultimately, we believe that becoming such a reader will help them to evaluate what they have written and develop control over their writing” (148). Sommers highlights the importance of scaffolding students into becoming successful questioning readers. Students must learn what types of questions to ask while reading—questions that address confusions and weaknesses within the paper. In the article, The Ill Effects of the Five Paragraph Theme, Kimberly Wesley notes, “These questions are the most challenging ones for any writer and, unfortunately, the ones least often asked of high school students…as a result, [students] rarely understand the purpose of their paper” (59). With this in mind, I decided to read the paper out loud, while giving verbal comments. I wanted the student to know what was going through my head as I was reading. I stopped after reading the thesis paragraph. The student’s thesis was describing how recycling was a part of Michigan State University’s culture. One of her points compared MSU to other colleges, which showed the amount of care MSU takes in recycling. I knew the student was from China, so I thought I was about to make a really good comment on what she should do. I told the student that she should compare Chinese universities to MSU in relation to their cultures of recycling. Not only did I make this suggestion, but I also persisted to comment on how she could go about doing so. Even though she never directly brought my commenting to a halt, she was nodding her head with a disinterested look on her face. I thought that I was confusing her—which in a sense, I was—so I stopped talking to ask her what was the matter. She was at first hesitant to tell me what the issue was, but I knew there was something going on. She then explained to me that she did not want to focus on Chinese universities, rather she wanted to do something more with comparing MSU to other American universities. Guilt started to rain over me. I was taking control of the student’s paper without ever including her or taking her viewpoint into consideration. I knew the paper was still an infant that could be molded in various ways. In her same text, Sommers states that “teachers' comments can take students' attention away from their own purposes in writing a particular text and focus that attention on the teachers' purpose in commenting” (149). If I had never urged her to tell me her issue with my comments, the student could have acted upon my comment of comparing MSU’s recycling culture to Chinese universities. Since I was the teacher, the student would have thought my comment should take precedence over her own purpose, or direction, in her paper. Before venturing into comment, I should have said, “Now, this is a point you could make in your paper, but you don’t have to do it. There are so many ways of going about your thesis so don’t feel like you have to do this. But, have you thought about comparing MSU’s recycling culture with Chinese universities?” This would have shown the student a type of question to ask, but, as Sommers has stated, I wouldn’t have steered the student’s attention away from her own purpose of the paper. Still, my mishap with the student wasn’t a total failure. Right after she told me that she didn’t want to compare MSU with Chinese universities, she realized that she wanted to not only show how MSU has recycling apart of its culture more than other American universities but show how MSU could improve their culture of recycling through a comparison to other American universities, which employ better and more methods of recycling. I realized for next time that I must construct my comments in a way that won’t divert the students from their desired purpose in their writing.