This week we read three different articles that attack the same issue from somewhat different angles. While I found the NCTE article to be similar and somewhat redundant from reading “Writing Comments on Student Papers,” I still found each article made good, unique points regarding the evaluation and accompanied feedback on student writing. Peter Elbow’s “Ranking, Evaluating, and Liking” was the first one that I had the chance to read and found that it brought some interesting thoughts to the theory behind evaluating student papers. I agree wholeheartedly with Elbow in the first section where he talks about the problem with ranking and holistic grading. He first mentions how it is an unreliable way to grade student work. Paraphrasing Elbow, he believes that ranking students does not foster the best learning environment in terms of becoming a better writer. Instead, it puts the student writer in the precarious position of writing for the sake of what evaluator wants as opposed to truly exploring themselves and their ideas in their writing. I found this to be particularly troubling as I read further into the article. To test this mode of evaluation, he cites a study where the same paper was distributed to a number of different english teachers. The study yielded eye-opening results as each teacher offered a different score for the same paper. Sort of ironically, you would expect a mode of grading used to be able to effectively rank and score students is actually quite ambiguous and does not have the universal grading principle it was thought to create. This was when Elbow offered a solution of sorts to this problem. He talks about the idea of evaluating as a opposed to the ranking system that was previously discussed. Evaluation, from Elbow’s description seems like a much better way for teachers to score a students writing. There was one line from the article I felt helped to explain the rationale for using evaluation; “…takes account of the complex context of writing: who the writer is, what the writer’s audience and goals are, who we as readers and how we read, and how we might differ in our reading from other readers the writer might be addressing.” Along this idea, Elbow mentions the utility of portfolios as a means for coming up with course grades at the end of the semester. I really liked this idea because it allows the evaluator to account for the growth of the student over the course of time, which allows the student to take the comments and suggestions as they come and apply them to their future writings. He does admit that evaluation is an imperfect way of evaluating student writing. Elbow goes on to mention that too much evaluation can lead students into a pattern of “trying to hide what they don’t understand and trying to impress.” He likens this idea to patients trying to hide symptoms from a doctor. How are you supposed to get better if you do not show the doctor what is wrong? The same could be said about writing, meaning if you hide your deficiencies in your writing from the person evaluating it, then you will not advance your writing abilities. At the end, he talks about the importance of “liking.” I really enjoyed reading this section, especially as someone who writes and performs stand-up comedy. The reason being, as Elbow explains, is that is important that we like what we write. Further, that does not mean we cannot like it, and be critical and uncomfortable with it at the same time. As this idea pertains to my comedy, there have been many instances where I write a joke, and I like it a lot, but something seems off. Whether it be the delivery, timing, wording, or its place in the flow of the entire act, there is something off. Just as Elbow explains, as long as I really like the joke that I have written, then it is just a matter of refining it and getting to a point where I go from liking it to loving it. I couldn’t tell you how many times that I have performed a joke and it bombs, yet I still walk off stage with a feeling of “there’s something there.”
In the article “Writing Comments on Students’ Papers,” the ideas that are brought forth were spot on in my opinion. The crux of what the article is telling us is that it is important to make the student feel encouraged to continue to write and continue to get better as a writer. As the author phrased it, to “facilitate improvement.” This brought me back to high school where the comments I would receive from my teachers was often times somewhat vague without a sense of what it was I needed to fix. It is not lost on me that comments need to be somewhat concise, but “You haven’t really thought this through.” is not enough for the student to work off of. I’ve found in my own experience, once you approach the instructor and inquire about the comments they leave on something that I have written, my teachers were very good at clearing up the points they made that I did not understand. This, however, should not exonerate the teacher from giving good, useful comments on the writing from the very beginning. One other point from this reading I found really interesting was the idea that it is easier to learn something new when we attach that new piece of information to something that we already know. Looking back, it actually seems to ring true, and there is no better way to explain it than how we go through our education system. It as a cumulation of the skills and knowledge we learn along our journey as students into the real world. It begs the question, as important as the matter is in terms of getting a job, just as important are the skills that we learn along the way. One last thing from this article I found to interest me was the idea of redundantly commenting on the same error multiple times in a writing sample. As the author described, it is important to tell the student where they made their mistakes, but also allowing them to rectify and correct them on their own. It is mentioned that on many occasions the student makes the same error repeatedly in the same piece of work. Rather than just pointing it out wherever you see it, point it out once from one of the earliest examples of that error, and allow the student to go back and edit all of the other repeat mistakes themselves. I find this to be a brilliant way to encourage students to learn through their own errors and mistakes. It holds the student accountable for making the revisions, making it somewhat easier for the teacher to make an evaluation “Did they make all of the corrections I asked for,” it also allows the student to get their hands dirty and work through and learn the right way to approach and execute something they have seemed to be deficient in.
The last article, from NCTE, seemed to simply reinforce what we read from the comments article. I’d say the one big thing I took away from this reading, as it was mentioned in the other article, we seem to be at a place where teachers comments can damage the development of a student as a writer because their focus and emphasis turns from what their purpose for writing a given work is, to what the teachers comments are. The issue is these comments set a standard for what the teacher is looking for. While they may end up with a “better” grade in the class, their writing skills do not necessarily advance.
Kevin's Blog 