Blog 2: A Response to Sommers and Yancey

Sommers and "Responding to Student Writing":

In “Responding to Student Writing”, Nancy Sommers addresses the issue of teacher’s comments on student’s writing. She mentions that comments are the most used but least understood method for response. The purpose of comments is to motivate a student to revise their work or do something different for the next assignment, yet Sommers feels that vague or confusing comments do not lead to the constructive criticism that a student needs in order to improve.    

Sommers conducted a year-long study that led to two interesting findings concerning teacher’s comments on student’s papers. The first is that commentary can take attention away from a student’s purpose in writing and turn the attention toward the teacher’s purpose in commenting. This means that when a student reads comments and prepares to revise a paper, they oftentimes make changes that the teacher wants, not changes that they, as the writer, deem necessary.

Next, Sommers looks at how commentary can become confusing to a student. Sometimes interlinear comments and marginal comments are contradictory. A student is being told to edit and develop new material at the same time.

Sommers’s second finding is that most comments are not text specific and can be interchangeable. Here is where we see such comments as: “think about your audience”, “avoid the passive”, and “be clear”. These are no more than generalities and abstract demands; there is no specific advice or strategies being offered to the student. In this case, revision becomes a guessing game.

The challenge then, Sommers writes, is to give reason for revision; show the student his or her potential for development; be specific. She goes on to mention that the problem most likely arises due to poor training. Teachers, for the most part, are not trained in response to students during teacher-training and writing workshops. According to Sommers, “The problem is that most of us as teachers of writing have been trained to read and interpret literary texts for meaning, but, unfortunately, we have not been trained to act upon the same set of assumptions in reading student texts as we follow in reading literary texts”. Therefore, when reading a student’s work, we read with a bias and that bias determines how we comprehend what is being read. Changes must be made in the way that teachers are trained and the way that teachers comment on student work. To not make such changes would be doing a disservice to teachers and students alike.

 

Yancey “On Reflection”:

In “On Reflection”, Yancey focuses her interest on reflection as “a means of going beyond the text to include a sense of the ongoing conversations that text enters into”. She calls for a using student talk differently so that students can participate as agents of their own learning.

After reading the article, this is what I learned about reflection:

·         It is self-assessment which is oriented to the gap between intention and accomplishment.

·         It entails projection or goal setting.

·         Reflection, according to Yancey is “the process by which we know what we have accomplished and by which we articulate accomplishment” and, it is also “the product of those processes.

·         Its purpose is to provide insight.

·         Reflection provides a means of bringing practice and theory together.

·         It is habitual and learned.

·         Reflection requires both kinds of thinking: scientific and spontaneous.

·         Language is critical for reflection.

·         Finding the “problem” is a key feature and is also the first critical step.

·         Reflection is a social process, but is also an individual one.

·         Reflection is rhetorical: “by reflecting on our work, we theorize our own practices” and we come to know, understand, and improve our work.

·         It is both a process and a product.

·         Reflection is “not only aside the drafts, but within them”.

 

On the Final Project:

I missed class last week, but after looking over the collaborative notes I feel that I would be most interested in working on the writer’s handbook. I agree that it might be better to write for teachers. I also think that I would prefer to have an analog version.