Responding to Writing
Improvements in critical thinking through writing can come about only when we respond thoughtfully to texts, and when students understand those comments. In effect, you can "think of your commentary as a personal correspondence with the student, something that makes your own thinking visible and permanent" (Bean, 2001, 253). If we are coaching thinking as well as writing, our own efforts at clarity are helped if we show the writer specifically where a paper works, comment on a strong passage, identify where we lose the point, or highlight a tricky transition or gap in logic or flow. These kinds of specific comments are considerably more useful to students than "be concise", "why is this here?", "awkward", or "did you read the text?".
As a teacher, you can respond formatively or summatively to pieces of writing. For both types of responding, it is very helpfu to make evaluation criteria explicit, such as in a rubric. Formative responding suits the drafting cycles, or when thinking is in development (this may or may not be graded). Summative responding suits more "finished" work that is evaluated for a grade. Therefore, it is helpful to break up major assignments into smaller stages, so that students have a chance to make sense of our comments, and incorporate them into the next stage or development of a major piece of work, continuing to refine and polish it.
Key points
- Be specific in your comments
- Formative assessment is best suited for work-in-progress to coach thinking
- Summative assessment is best suited to "finished" work
- Make evaluation criteria explicit
- Focus first on higher order concerns and second on lower order concerns
- Ask provocative questions to stimulate thinking
- Keep feedback focused to three to four major points
In general, it makes sense, in either kind of responding, to comment first on "higher order" concerns: ideas and organization. If there is no thesis in a thesis-guided assignment, if a text is written in chronological order when a logical order is required, if the topic is adrift from the assignment, no amount of attention to "lower order" concerns such as punctuation, spelling or verb tenses will be sufficient to significantly improve the student work. This is not to say that the latter do not matter; they can make the difference in helping a reader understand the issues at stake in a student's thinking, and they are absolutely required in final versions. The point is rather what you gain by responding to them at earlier stages of a student's work. If a student is going to significantly re-work a text, syntax and grammar will change dramatically.
Avoid the temptation to "fix" student writing, or correct passages. Students do not learn if you do this kind of responding. Ask provocative questions instead: "so how does this follow from the last paragraph?", "your central premise is the immutability of culture, and the ephemerality of identity. Doesn't this point appear to contradict that?". Keep your feedback to three or four major points (or two to three if significant higher order concerns are present), focused on what the key things are that this writer can do to improve their thinking/writing. In some cases, this may be changing the scope of the argument, or incorporating an additional text; in others, it may be developing some vocabulary; in yet others, it could be to engage in more crafting or proofreading. Keeping in mind what will help THIS student allows for your responses to be fresh, targeted, and meaningful to each student. It will also produce better work. You can accompany such comments with assignment-specific marking rubrics.