I have always been a student who welcomes feedback from my teachers. I appreciate reading comments for two reasons: first, their presence indicated that my teachers took the time to actually read my work. Second, I can use the feedback to improve my work. In my opinion, these comments are crucial. However, I also know that, more often than not, students do not read these comments. More often than not, teachers spend their time writing comments for the student to look at the grade and throw the paper into a folder, never to be looked at again. I can imagine this has an impact on the quality of the comments that a teacher is inspired to leave but, that being said, I think commentary is too important to be taken lightly.
I find the topic of the first paper, "Writing Comments on Student Papers" by John Bean to be interesting because Bean regards commentary as a must, and broaches the topic of what qualifies as helpful, constructive commentary. Very few people are good at taking criticism, and students are among the newest, freshest writers. It is important to recognize this, and apply commentary accordingly.
Bean drops the word "puritanical" in reference to the commentary strategy that is commonly employed by teachers, which is sadly accurate. Paper revisions can turn into whirlwinds of red pen marks and comments that aren't easily understood-- as evidenced by the student responses Bean cites. I feel that the most important thing a teacher could do is to give the same kind of criticism that he or she would hope to receive on their own writing.
I completely agree with the idea of making comments on late stage rough drafts, because this is a way of ensuring that the comments are read the the suggestions are noted. As I said before, comments on a final piece are not going to be heeded by the vast majority of students. The hope is that the comments on the final piece will be read and applied to future work, but this simply does not happen in most cases.
I have mentioned more than once that I enjoy reading things that I can one day employ in my own classroom, and this paper includes a wealth of knowledge that I can certainly utilize. Moving through the article, I appreciated the suggested commentary, as well as the explanations attached. Most interesting to me was Bean's categorization of grammatical errors as "low-order concerns." He suggests that students be led to realize their own mistakes, and not necessarily have them pointed out by the teacher-- i.e., telling the student that a sentence contains a grammatical error and leaving it to them to correct. I really like this idea, mainly because I think it would force the student to learn exactly what s/he did wrong, and would be a more proactive way to learn to avoid making the same mistake in the future.
My overall reaction to this piece is positive, mainly because Bean is not the kind of teacher who lets his students get away with much, I like that! I have a lot of respect for the methods he shared in this paper, and would be excited to try them out on my own.
Moving on to the next piece, "Response to Writing" by Beach and Friedrich, I feel that these two articles were well paired. Beach and Friedrich's paper opens with a walk through the past several decades, in regard to the strategies employed in teaching writing. Right from the beginning it was evident that these writers and Bean share the opinion that comments on drafts are more effective than comments on final pieces, in regard to feedback being heeded.
Something I found interesting about this paper was the idea that effective revision and commentary will sometimes call for the teacher to take a step back and consider a different perspective. Somehow this hadn't occurred to me, but I was particularly struck by the example of the Indian born teacher's reaction to her American student's paper on receiving her driver's license. Effectively responding to content may occasionally call for the teacher stepping beyond his or her own experience in order to focus on the writing and respond accordingly.
I especially like the idea of "reader based feedback," which is explained as feedback in which the teacher responds as a typical reader would- for example, responding with surprise, anger, or confusion, in reaction to the content presented. I have experienced this, and it makes the feedback seem more human and relateable. I do not think that this indirect feedback method is always appropriate, but I think it would be helpful and refreshing if mixed in among more traditional, direct commentary.
Each student is different and commentary can never be one-size-fits-all. Some revision strategies will work for some and not for others, and it would seem that part of the art of teaching is figuring out how to help each student in the best possible way. I liked this second article because it covered a myriad of potential strategies, and acknowledged the pros and cons of each. The most important thing to gather about teacher commentary, in my opinion, is that it is both sought out by students, and crucial to their success.
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