Responding to Student Writing

Most teachers have experienced the struggle to respond effectively to student writing while still managing to get more than three hours of sleep each night. There are many strategies that can help, but not all work for everyone. By the way, this section of the website is still being drafted (3/17/22).

Assignment Design. Arguably, the best way to lessen the load of responding to student writing is to design writing assignments that create fewer issues:

Establish a process for the writing. The obvious process element is spreading the writing out over several drafts, what is often referred to as multi-drafting. But multi-drafting needs to have a logic to it. Have students focus on a different aspect of the writing with each draft. For example, the first draft should have a clear central idea, a defensible organization, and bountiful evidence, but you’re going to ignore grammar, drawing of conclusions, and introduction. The second draft should focus on turning the first draft into a communicating draft. Draft language should be cleaned out, and the introduction and drawing of conclusions should be addressed. The third draft should be about fine tuning: integration of evidence, document format, metacommentary, grammar, and style. Multi-drafting takes some of the stress out for students, and it allows you to limit your response with each draft. You move through the writings more quickly, and you get the chance to develop more efficient standard responses to typical writing issues.
Process can also include co-processing writings, such as having students write, before or after the first draft, a short justification of their essay/paper organization choices. For example, “Why did you choose to organize your research paper in this way?” Other similar writings include asking them to write their understanding of their audience, asking them to write a standalone literature review, or even having them write a standalone description of the problem they’ll be addressing in a longer paper (and that will be incorporated when they write that paper).
Assignment design includes instructions, of course, and well-written instructions can make response much easier. Unfortunately, while many of us believe we’re at least adequate at giving instructions (including this writer), many of us are also probably overconfident. Ideally, we could get feedback on our assignment instructions before we actually give the instructions to students. You can. The Writing Center offers just such a service.
Another well-established design element is the rubric. A good rubric establishes your definitions for effectiveness where the various (or select) elements of writing are concerned. It’s worth the class time to take a look at the rubric and clear up potential misunderstandings. Students are more likely to questions about the assignment if the shared object of the rubric is there to mediate.

Delegating Responsibility. You don’t have to do it all yourself. Yeah, I said it. If your students are writing to communicate ideas to others, one of the appropriate audiences is the others, and not just you. Yes, you will want to respond to content from your professional perspective, but, thanks to that professional perspective, you can easily fail to represent the target audience, if that target audience is some version of the general, non-professional reader. Require a few Writing Center visits. Incorporate an effective peer review process. Doing so may clear up quite a lot of the time-consuming responses you might otherwise need to make (e.g. issues with structure, use of evidence, counterarguments, bad logic, etc.).

Response Strategies. Ahhh . . . the rubber is hitting the road: you’re actually sitting down (or standing, or unicycling, or whatever) to respond to those 35 research paper drafts. Well, maybe you’ll watch a little of the game first. And the dog needs to be washed. And this book needs to be finished–just one more chapter. The following strategies work better when the assignment sets them up.

Only respond to three areas of the writing. This strategy is predicated on the idea that responding isn’t necessarily teaching. Responding doesn’t necessarily imply that learning will take place, especially when the response is “thorough” (in the Paper Era, making the page bleed red ink). If, for example, you imply that a section of the paper needs to be re-written because the student failed to account for a major piece of evidence, all other comments that address that section become problematic. Instead, pick out the three most important issues the student needs to work on first, and hammer those issues home. There’s at least a decent chance that if the student comes to understand why those issues are issues, other issues will become more apparent for the student.
It really should be about encouraging the writer to become a better writer, a writer more aware of how their writing is experienced by readers, a writer who doesn’t simply understand the rulebook but understands why the rules exist and when they can be broken. Try to respond as a reader. Talk about what happened to you as you tried to reconstruct the ideas through the strings of words and punctuation.
Recognize/confirm effective writing. Pick out three practices/moves that worked really well and explain why they work. It’s not good enough to say “good!” in the margin. Add a little to explain why: “Throughout this paragraph, and especially where I’ve highlighted in blue, I really get the feeling that you’re thinking about me as a reader. You’re anticipating what I’m thinking, and it engages me!” Yes, this adds more response time, but it motivates writers and engages them in their writing, and that may lead to fewer issues in future drafts and assignments.
Ignore grammar, unless it is an area upon which you’ve chosen to focus. For some, this writer included, the basic nuts and bolts of the language are an obsession. But is this the time and place to teach the basic nuts and bolts? Because writers don’t suddenly “get” how to use commas after one explanatory comment in the margin. It takes time, practice, feedback, and a lot of reading to master the nuts and bolts of a language. If you want to take the time, great, but it might be better to make a general note about consistent errors and then suggest the Writing Center. Although the Writing Center is primarily about providing a reader’s experience, they can work with those nuts-and-bolts issues. See also International Students Writing at Truman in the Faculty Resources area of the WAC website.
Again, use a rubric. There are teaching, responding, and scoring rubrics. Teaching rubrics explain everything you’d like to see in the writing. They use full sentences, and big ones may even use or link to examples. Scoring rubrics are pared-down rubrics that cover just what you want to score/evaluate. Responding rubrics marry the two: they offer a series of short sentences and/or phrases for each category/level of concern. These sentences and/or phrases can be circled to indicate what needs work and what is working well. It’s basically a grid full of boilerplate, but it doesn’t have to be so clinical. The rubric can be combined with a short list of priorities and a few margin comments, and maybe links to examples.
The bottom line question is “What are you after in this cycle of response?” If your department hasn’t already done so, mapping out where discipline-specific writing standards are taught might be a good idea. Going about writing instruction methodically can save time and impress more deeply upon the student the need to pay attention to this stuff. There should be value in understanding where students are developing as writers-within-the-discipline.