Responding to Student Writing – Derek Dennis

Our discussion about revision and responding to writing really caught my interest. As a future English teacher, I know that a good amount of my time will be devoted to correcting and responding to student writing. Because of this, I know how crucial it is for me to refine my skills in responding to student writing and to establish an efficient process in which I do so. My time in the ESL center this semester as began this process. Every day I respond to multiple students’ writing and I feel that each student I work with assists me in finding out the most efficient and helpful way to better student writing. That being said, however, I have come across many issues in deciding exactly how to mark student papers. Should I mark every mistake or grammar issue I come across? Should I rewrite sentences for students in a way that I feel works best? Should I focus solely on composition and meaning? I still don’t know that exact answers to these questions, but after reading Richard Haswell’s “Minimal Marking”, I feel that I have developed a better understanding in how to mark students papers in the most useful and efficient way possible.

“Minimal Marking”, explains the method in which Richard Haswell has developed in marking student papers. It is basically a system of symbols and markings that force students to address and fix their own papers. Haswell believes responding to student writing should consist of minimal marking, meaning the amount of marks a teacher makes on a paper is as minimal as possible. Haswell believes that if a teacher heavily marks a student’s paper it only overwhelms the student and reduces the chance of bettering student writing. After thinking about the markings I have made on student’s papers in the ESL Center, this all really began to make sense. I would find myself working through papers and fixing every little thing I saw. I would rewrite sentences; erase mistakes, correct grammar and so on. This led to students simply sitting there and going along with every little thing I said. I was only helping the student’s writing improve on this one paper, and not as a whole. I was taking on the role of an editor more than the role of a tutor. Haswell’s article has provided me with information needed in order force students to think about their writing and improve it without me telling them exactly what to do. Although I am still working on finding the proper balance, as these things don’t come easy, I feel that I am establishing a good base knowledge of how to respond to student writing.

Haswell’s article really interested me so I did a little more research on the idea minimal marking and responding to student writing. Ray Smith’s article, “The Rhetoric of Paper Marking, Or A Wheelbarrow for Sisyphus”, contains a list of things that happen when marking is too abundant. This list has become a set of ideas I think about constantly when working with students. It provides a layout for establishing how to, and how not to, respond to student writing and what happens when you do or don’t do these things.

1.)    There are limits to the amount of commentary to which one can productively attend, particularly when that commentary responds to prose in which one has bared his or her intellect;

2.)    When comments about sentence-level correctness outnumbered comments dealing with matters of substance, my students usually assumed that the aim of essay assignments was to insure sentence-level correctness;

3.)    Correcting their errors led my students to believe that I was to serve as their editor (when they revised)—and, if they did precisely what I asked them to do, they should receive A’s;

4.)    Much of my marking, because it was not explicit in pointing to the difficulty I perceived, could be read as “that’s not the way I (the instructor) would have written it.

As I said before, I am still trying to develop my skills in efficiently responding to student writings; with articles and resources such as these, however, I feel that my skills are slowly establishing.