When your students give you their first low-stakes assignments — their pre-drafts and their drafts — how will you respond?
You’ll take it as your goal to write comments that show your students how they can revise their drafts substantially to produce essays that meet the highest expectations we have for college writing. But how will you do that?
You’ll discuss that at length in the practicum, so we don’t have to answer that question in full now. But we do want to ask it so you can have it in mind as you prepare your syllabus and lesson plans over the summer.
The writers you’ll teach are hugely diverse, as you know. Many are multilingual, so they may be attentive to language in ways that come with their adeptness at translation, although they are less fluent in English than native speakers. Their educations vary tremendously, too, and those educations make them think about what it means to be a good writer in ways that might surprise you.
To think about this more concretely, read this sample paper, written by a QC student who gave permission for us to share it.
- What do you see as the greatest strengths of this paper, and how would you like to see the writer build on those strengths with a revision?
- When you think about writing comments on this paper, what aspects of it seem most confounding?
- What else do you wonder about our students as writers, or about the ways you’ll respond to their writing?
What do you see as the greatest strengths of this paper, and how would you like to see the writer build on those strengths with a revision?
The greatest strength of this paper is the student’s ability to draw examples from the text. It’s impressive that the student is able to identify the intended audience by delving into the history of the word, différance. I think that is a particularly strong section of the paper because the student backs their claim. If the student could apply this method to other sections of the paper, it would be much stronger.
When you think about writing comments on this paper, what aspects of it seem most confounding?
One thing that I wonder about when commenting is if there is ever a time to let things go. For example, smaller grammatical errors. As a writing consultant, I try to focus on bigger issues such as structure, evidence, etc., but as an instructor I wonder if I should draw more attention to these issues. How can I do that without taking focus away from larger issues?
Pinging off of what Daniella says! For me, the most exciting part of this paper on a content-level were the students thoughts on theory-production, i.e. who is theory’s implicit intended audience and how is that socially determined; how does this affect them and their classmates as they learn to read and write theory. I didn’t know what “gate-keeping” was as an undergrad haha, this person is ahead of me.
Re: a revision, I’d ask the student to 1) refine their thesis (wasn’t totally sure what the argument was), and 2) figure out how to back up that thesis within a five-point structure in which each stage of the argument builds on the last one (versus now, where the evidence is presented a bit haphazardly).
One thing I worry about––with editing in general and especially with undergrads––is how much commentary is helpful versus how much will feel overwhelming and discouraging. Any particular advice re: this area greatly appreciated!
*reposting with name
What do you see as the greatest strengths of this paper, and how would you like to see the writer build on those strengths with a revision?
The greatest strength of this paper is the student’s ability to draw examples from the text. It’s impressive that the student is able to identify the intended audience by delving into the history of the word, différance. I think that is a particularly strong section of the paper because the student backs their claim. If the student could apply this method to other sections of the paper, it would be much stronger.
When you think about writing comments on this paper, what aspects of it seem most confounding?
One thing that I wonder about when commenting is if there is ever a time to let things go. For example, smaller grammatical errors. As a writing consultant, I try to focus on bigger issues such as structure, evidence, etc., but as an instructor I wonder if I should draw more attention to these issues. How can I do that without taking focus away from larger issues?
I agree with Daniella that the student selects compelling examples to bolster their point that this work of theory is written in prose that is, perhaps, needlessly complex. The “différance” formulation is an especially good one. It seems as though the student could improve in their mastery of MLA-style. In particular, a significant number of the parenthetical in-text citations are misplaced, which muddies the clarity of the student’s argument and the distinctions between their own argument and the ideas of the thinkers they engage with. I think the student’s works cited list is also lacking; unless “Monster Culture” also contains the history of “différance” that the student alludes to, it strikes me as necessary that the student cite wherever they got the biographical information on Derrida and the history of his term.
I agree with the above comments, and I would say that the most interesting thing here is that the student seems willing to theorize, for themselves, audience and what it means to work in decoding-mode, including as others have said, the question of gate-keeping, unpacking and constellating argumentation, etc.
Yes, the writing consultant in me wants to look at some of the broader issues re: structure, and I think that is a fine place to start. It might also be useful, if we’re thinking about this paper as instructors, to ask how the student arrived at this mode of kind of thesis-less analysis and how the types of things that are being asked of the student in the prompt were (or were not) scaffolded during the course of the class.
I bring this up not as some easy out but because the tone is striking in a kind of rhetorically performative walk-through. Could the model that the student is, perhaps, working from be used to help them think about what they’re doing re: thesis? Is there, in fact, room for a thesis here in a way that the student feels that they are engaging intellectually in a meaningful way or do they feel that they are just getting into summary which may end up deadening their ability to want to craft a thesis instead of just checking the boxes in terms of the essay’s requirements?
I’d like to continue to explore and think collectively, if not with this specific assignment, the way that assignments are crafted to give students enough leeway to feel that they are being creative or inventive in their work while also reinforcing some of the issues (citation, argumentation, etc) that can come from more guided approaches.
“I’d like to continue to explore and think collectively, if not with this specific assignment, the way that assignments are crafted to give students enough leeway to feel that they are being creative or inventive in their work while also reinforcing some of the issues (citation, argumentation, etc) that can come from more guided approaches.” –– vibes!
I think that the introductory paragraph is quite strong, I could tell what the student wanted to focus on, and it made me interested in the topic. The student stays focused on the argument throughout the paper and the strongest parts seem to be when their voice is audible (i.e., “When I read the term When I read the term “différance (4)”, I was thinking it means “different”. Because it looks like English word “difference”, the freshman students might bring English meaning into their understands directly.”) because I can really hear their thoughts developing and hear the articulation of their argument.
There are moments though, where the citations do not necessarily support the student’s argument and becomes a bit distracting to the reader. I may nudge the student to other areas of the text that more directly backs up their argument.
Since the students in each class have such diverse backgrounds, I also wonder to what extent I am supposed to comment on their style. Sentences like “if this explanation is not obvious enough, let’s look at another example” should be cut out or at least cut down in academic writing, though it’s not necessarily wrong. I would love some sort of guideline on these subtle issues.
I can tell this student spent a lot of time revising this paper, and I wholeheartedly applaud their efforts. I like that the student seems aware of the audience they are writing for, as opposed to just writing in a vacuum. I also the way they used rhetorical questions to help with their structure/organization and guide the reader through their thought process.
That said, I think this student could still improve this paper in a few areas, beginning with the introduction section. It seems like all the information that should be included in a single introductory paragraph (introducing the text, short summary, setting up the claim, thesis statement) is spread out across the first four paragraphs. As a result, the “thesis” that this student includes at the end of their first paragraph isn’t exactly a thesis, but a sort of prelude to an argument that isn’t clarified until the fourth paragraph. To improve this piece, I would suggest that this student condense the information offered in these first few paragraphs and then jump straight into their sophisticated analysis that begins in paragraph 5.
I am also concerned about if, when, and/or how I should comment on my student’s grammar. As a writing tutor, I have always given that aspect of my student’s writing very low priority because I was more concerned about higher order concerns. That said, I don’t know how to approach this as an evaluator of their work. I have heard of some professors who have devised systems for determining how many points should be deducted for grammar (for example, a student might lose ¼ of a point for every 5 errors or something along those lines). Personally, I am not partial to this style of grading because I don’t think its helpful for students at all and it just incredibly tedious. Besides, the last thing I want is my students running their papers through a grammar checking software like Grammarly or something like that because they are afraid of losing points. Is there a way we could work on this during the conference hour?
Happy to talk more about this tomorrow & in practicum!
For now, I’ll chime in just a few thoughts about my experience grading work with a similar draft/revision model at other CUNY’s also with very diverse student body:
-Try to be ahead of your students! But give yourself permission to not always be.
Teaching revision! Feedback (from instructor & peers’) as starting point! Thinking about how you learn each students’ needs/strengths/interests gradually from project to project.
I usually need 7-10 days to grade, so that means you need more like 2 weeks or so between a Draft & a Final realistically, so I don’t feel pressed on my grade follow-up, to open the feedback loop if you will.
-Don’t be afraid to extend deadlines. The students will appreciate it when you do!
-When grading, it helps me to “calibrate” before I submit any grades. That means I read 3-5 papers, making comments, writing some summative feedback, but only save (not submit) the feedback. I may have an idea on the grade, but I may not. It helps me estimate the difference between a B or a C; especially now with the heightened anxiety for all, I wanted to be considerate of how numbers get in students’ heads as well as empathy & clarity in feedback style. My voice in “feedback to learner” end note is often more personal than the reader response critic on the page. I do tend to write: “Hi Jamie, … ~Prof. Pernicano.” Sometimes, if I’m having a more negative response to their submissions (“why don’t they get it?” “how are they all still confused?,” etc.), I pause and need to allow myself the day, or even two, to process. I’d like to think the time and space is worth it for me to be able to find a more thoughtful and empathetic way to provide the feedback and maybe even slightly curve the grade on that paper as need be, even if they’re anxiously waiting on me.. which they are even now… truly..
~Kara
I’ll add as a resource I share with all my students:
“Peer Review: Commenting Strategies,” Posted by the University of Minnesota Writing Studies
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlSCMx9-fGA
I agree with all the comments above, and am really excited by the student’s close reading of the text. Like others I also feel the need to discuss big picture elements such as organization & structure first. For me the next step, then, might be working on summarizing and paraphrasing; while the assignment does call for direct quotation, I think the student’s own writing gets buried in the quotes. Relatedly, I think this essay highlights how students sometimes write without the “I”—I’ve noticed many have been taught/told not to use first person, and end up writing these “rhetorically performative” sentences, to borrow Judah’s words.