“Sommer-izing”

In 1982, Nancy Sommers wrote a landmark article, Responding the Student Writing, that changed the face of teacher commenting as we know it. Sommers addresses many issues that affect the manner in which we respond to student writing. This is a text that teachers have been informally interacting with for over twenty years, and it’ still a highly affective piece today. I agree wholeheartedly with what Sommers says, specifically when she addresses the roles we take in commenting.

The largest key to a successful response lies in both the reader and writer to understanding their roles. In the case of academic writing, the teachers should be genuine, thoughtful, and most importantly, serious. Like Sommers, we should “feel a weighty responsibility when we respond to our students’ words, knowing that we, too, have received comments that have given us hope—and sometimes made us despair—in our abilities as writers.” This concern was expressed by many of the students in Across the Drafts, imploring the idea that the comments a teacher makes on a paper have a huge influence on future writing. Students take these responses to heart, and as teachers, should write them with this in mind. It’s vital, however, that the students learn not to read comments “as personal attacks […] but […] as instructive and portable words to take with them to the next assignment, across the drafts.” The strength of a teacher’s influence can have a negative effect, as indicated by the first finding of Sommers’ research. She says that, “Teachers’ comments can take students’ attention away from their own purposes in writing a particular text and focus that attention on the teachers’ purpose in commenting.” Comments can imply that should the student make the changes indicated, their paper will be golden. However, these changes may not make the paper “good” or even better than the previous draft, Sommers says. For example, if comments focus only on the many grammatical errors, (or some other lower order concern) the student may simply fix those areas and ignore any changes that they may feel are necessary (specifically higher order concerns). They push aside their own intent for the paper in favor of what they believe the teacher wants.

This is why it’s also important to let your intent be known in the commenting: not necessarily by stating this intent, but in taking care with how you phrase your comments. After all, the goal of commenting is make students better writers by getting them involved in the writing process. The key is letting them know what to address --not necessarily how to do so. As a teacher, we have to get students thinking, and commentary is a prime opportunity to do so, so long as our comments are clear and specific.

Clarity is a huge component of successful commenting. It’s important to make sure the student knows what is meant by the comment. Words such as “wooden” and “fuzzy” will probably do little to help with actual revising of the paper. After reading Sommers’ article, Howard Tinberg says he realizes that he, “had given confusing messages to [his] students,” and he says this in a disparaging tone. It’s clearly an issue in terms of response. As we heard in the movie, there are many strategies to commenting. My favorite example was the student who related the professor’s use of squiggly lines to mark the points in which the paper was unclear. It’s quite possible those lines were more confusing to the student than the actual draft was the professor.

Finally, we should all keep in mind that commenting is something we are giving to the students. And as Sommers says, “a ‘true gift’ [is] not just as a possession passed from giver to receiver but, rather, something that is kept in motion, […] outward into the world.”