CCCC 2005: ReviewReview: D.01 Across the Drafts: Responding to Student Writing--A Longitudinal Perspective Nancy Sommers presented her CCCC research to one of the most packed sessions I’ve attended in more than 15 years of conference attendance. As I entered the session, I was greeted by Michelle Clark with Bedford/St. Martins (when you see Sommer’s new text book, pay attention to the lady behind the curtain!) and given a DVD called Across the Drafts: Students and Teachers Talk about Feedback and a booklet called Making the Most of College Writing: A Guide for Freshmen by Emily O’Brien, Jane Rosenzweig and Nancy Sommers and published by the Harvard Expository Writing Program. Nancy Sommers presented “Responding to Student Writing” 24 years ago and returned to the topic this year. “The work of entering our student minds…is serious business” she said, as she wondered what students take with them from our comments. “There is always a story behind each effective comment” she claimed, and then focused her point by citing the Harvard longitudinal study to find out how students received feedback. “Feedback emerged as the hero and the antihero” of the study. Next, she screened her short film because it focuses on the presence of feedback, The first line of the film was “the worst feedback is no feedback” and that point was echoed by a number of students criticizing feedback using “the form,” one word comments, and other forms of scant and vague response by teachers. Rosenzweig and Sommers made this film from a blend of student and teachers voices talking about composing and revising and focusing on the role feedback plays in writing processes. It was a great film because it models the kind of discourse from both teachers and students that I think most of us would want for ourselves in our own teaching and learning experiences. The movement of writing from novice to expert is not straightforward. Writing progress and the role of feedback form a causal question that made Sommers see the need for a transactional experience that pairs honest critique and instruction. “If our comments move students forward, it’s because they resonate with students’ ideas. However, some comments seem written to the paper, not the student. What emerged from her research is a deeper, pedagogical understanding the power of feedback. Her survey of 400 students found that 90% of the students urged faculty to give more specific feedback. Students also noted the need to write about something that matters and to discuss their work with teachers. Sommers used the phrase “partnership in feedback” to emphasize the differences between praise and constructive criticism, and the need for their paring instead. Similar to the pairing of encouragement and critique is the pairing of feedback and instruction. Sommers stressed the need for students to transport lessons from one paper to the next. She then looked at the ways students receive feedback in terms of their identities as college students, and how that reception creates change in identity. Predictably, Sommers advised us not overwhelm students with comments and to offer feedback that helps writers with future papers through tactical feedback. One professor was mentioned as a good example because he was able to address students as apprentice writers and offer feedback as “a bridge” to the next assignment and to an improved writing and learning life for students. She advised her huge audience that we should model the roles of attentive readers for students, while also trying to learn to express instruction beyond the context of the paper itself. Feedback, Sommers stressed, is a key way to reach writers so that students see that they are imagined by their readers as valid thinkers. “Feedback doesn’t need to be monumental, but its effect often is” she concluded. |
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