ENGL 5010: Week Four/Thursday Slide Deck

ENGL 5010
Week Four:
Responding To
Student Writing
Part 2

Haswell 600
In essence they propose commentary that 1)
facilitates rather than judges, 2) emphasizes
performance rather than finished product, 3)
provides double feedback before and after
revision, and 4) helps bridge successful drafts by
requiring immediate revision.

Haswell
604
The best mark is that which allows students
to correct the most on their own with the
least help. An obvious pedagogical truth—
but one that runs counts to the still
established tradition of full correction.

Wilhoit 77
When you read a student’s paper and respond to it as a
reader, you indicate which aspects of the student’s paper
you found interesting, informative, thought-provoking,
humorous, moving, exciting, or boring. When done well and
consistently, this type of response can help your students
form a clearer sense of what it means to write for “real”
readers, not just for teachers who grade their work.

Wilhoit 77
Thinking through the counterpositions
you raise helps students develop their
critical thinking skills and teaches them
how to produce more rhetorically
sophisticated papers.

Wilhoit 81
[T]he tendency of some teachers to “appropriate” their
students” texts. Through their extensive comments,
teachers essentially rewrite the student’s paper—
substituting their thoughts and language for the student's. If
a student incorporates all of these changes when revising,
the final draft would be more the teacher’s than the
student’s.

Wilhoit 86-87
correcting
emoting
describing
suggesting
questioning
reminding
assigning

Wilhoit 90
Do not fall into the trap of believing that students
only learn in class if they have the benefit of your
commentary on their work: they will learn quite a
bit on their own if you design writing assignments
that challenge their thinking or require them to
apply course material in interesting ways.

Wilhoit 101
Teachers who hope to use grades to
motivate students must never sacrifice
the first goal of grading, though: to
provide students an honest, qualitative
assessment of their writing.

Wilhoit 103
Whether you follow your department’s grading standards or develop
standards of your own, your goal is consistency: as you work through a set
of papers, essays receiving the same grade ought to be comparable in
quality. You also want to have clear reasons for the grades you assign. A
grade ought to be based on the quality of a student’s writing and
reasoning. If a student questions a grade, you should be able to point to
specific places in the text where the writing is strong or weak, and you
should be able to explain how those passages helped you determine the
essay’s grade.

Wilhoit 103-04
holistic
atomistic
portfolio

Wilhoit 107-08
An Argument Against Grading

Anson et al 35
Instead, they continue to labor under a trialand-error
model of learning that fails to
engage them fully in the process of critically
considering their structural, rhetorical,
informational, and linguistic choices.

Anson et al 37
Such drafts should represent neither stellar
nor dreadful responses; rather, they should be
“interestingly problematic” in order to
engage students in a discussion of both
obvious and more subtle issues and concerns.

Anson et al 37
[W]hen students analyze sample texts with the goal
of trying to explain, to themselves and others,
what it means to produce such texts
successfully, they are learning skills and strategies
useful in other discursive settings where texts,
and their standards, may be unfamiliar to them.