1. Tutoring Writing Week #11
Responding to Student Writing, Responding
to Language Diversity, Responding to Errors
2. Nancy Sommers
“Responding to Student Writing” CCC (1982).
Her research questions:
1) What comments do teachers make on
student papers? How does our theory of
responding compare with actual practices?
2) How do students feel about these comments.
Which comments motivate substantial
revision?
3. Method
• Team of three researchers.
• Analyzed comments by 35 teachers from 2
schools (NYU and U of OK) along with
comments generated by computer program.
• Interviewed a sample of teachers and
students.
4. In class exercise:
Are the results of this study true today?
• As I review the three main results of this
study, please take notes about how your
experience compares with their results.
• I will pose a question for each result to get
your started.
• We will discuss your answers.
5. Results #1
• “…the calm, reasonable language of the
computer provided quite a contrast to the
hostility and mean-spiritedness of most of the
teachers’ comments” (149).
• Have you received mean-spirited comments
on your writing?
6. Results #2
• “teacher’s comments can take students away
from their own purposes in writing a
particular text and focus that attention on
the teacher’s purpose in commenting” (149).
– “Contradictory messages”: teachers mark both HOC’s
and LOC’s.
– Students thus have trouble prioritizing which
comments to attend to when they revise.
• What types of comments help/hinder you?
7. Result #3
• “most teachers comments are not text-
specific and could be interchanged, rubber-
stamped, from text to text” (152).
• Do you get generic comments on your
writing?
8. Sommers’s Suggestions
• Address students’ reasoning first, which may
push writers back into the messiness of
making meaning rather than the tidiness of
editing.
• Base comments on the students’ stage in the
writing process.
• Create connections between comments and
goals of the writing class.
9. Implications for Writing Center Work
• “As a means for helping students, they
[written comments] have limitations; they are,
in fact, disembodied remarks—one absent
writer talking to another” (155).
• How can writing tutors intervene here?
10. In class exercise
• Pretend that a student comes to you with
their paper marked as the paper Sommers
presents on page 150-151.
• How would you respond to this student?
• Take about 10 minutes to discuss this in small
groups.
11.
12. Lunsford and Lunsford’s Top Twenty
• "'Mistakes are a Fact of Life': A National
Comparative Study." College Composition and
Communication, forthcoming.
• Updates Andrea Lunsford and Robert Conner’s
1988 paper “Frequency of Formal Errors in
College Students Writing: Or Ma and Pa Kettle
do Research”
13. Lunsford and Conners 1988
• Note conflict:
o The process approach deems the marking of
errors as outside the work of college writing
teachers.
o Teachers (and other readers) notice errors.
• They aim to determine the errors teachers
mark and the errors students make.
14. Method
• Collect 21,500 papers from 300 teachers.
• Select representative sample.
• Develop taxonomy of errors.
• Create team of 50 readers.
15. Results
• The errors teacher mark vary.
• Teacher mark fewer than half of the errors in
students’ papers.
• The numbers of errors remain constant, but
the types of errors have changed, reflecting
what Lunsford and Conners call “visual
memory problems.”
16. Lunsford and Lunsford
• Types of writing students complete growing
more complex.
• Types of error:
o 1 computer: wrong word
o 7 punctuation: 2, 7, 11, 13, 15, 16, 20
o 2 pronoun: vague, lack of agreement
o 3 documentation: quotation, format, integration
o 5 mechanics: spelling, capitalization, missing word
o 2 other: sentence structure (syntax), verb tense
17. Lunsford and Lunsford
• What are the implications for writing center
work?
• What are the implications for attention to
language diversity?
18. Language Diversity: Victoria Osgood
• She reviews the work of Peter Elbow, Geneva
Smitherman, Lisa Delpit, Erica Lindemann,
Stephen Parks to argue for a both/and
position: a position that values students’
dialects and also helps them gain facility in
SWE.
• What are the benefits of this position?
• How might it be more complicated than
Osgood notes?
19. In class exercise-
to be finished on the blog for homework.
• Review Victoria Osgood’s essay. Note where you
agree and disagree with her.
• Write about a paragraph of feedback for Osgood.
Where might she improve her argument?
• Discuss Osgood with your group members. How
do your positions on language variety compare?
In what ways is your feedback similar? How does
it differ?
• What lessons can you apply when your write your
research paper?