What frustrates Presbyterian College professors about commenting on student writing? "Students don't read the comments, or if they do, they don't apply the advice to their next papers," answered Jerry Alexander. Both Robert Stutts and Brett Bebber mentioned writing the same comment repeatedly or marking the same errors over and over. Kirk Nolan did not "think students understand the point of comments. They often see them as justifications for their grade."

PC faculty members reported recently that they spend from ten to thirty minutes on a paper up to five pages long. All the time and effort may discourage faculty from assigning writing, but writing promotes learning, according to Writing Across the Curriculum research. At the March 12 Faculty Forum, Jill Frey presented research about commenting effectively on student writing. Left: Ron Zimmerman rests after a grueling session commenting on papers.

COACH THE WRITING
In a nutshell the most effective way to comment is to spend most of the time guiding students in writing the papers rather than grading the final drafts. Students may not pay attention to comments when they do not have a chance to revise. Assigning drafts, requiring drafts on early papers and then making them voluntary, or allowing rewrites of final drafts are three suggestions (Bean 242).

The process of commenting begins with the assignment. Let students know on the assignment sheet the features you expect in the in the paper. When you collect the drafts, read at least several quickly without making any marks on the paper. You may find that many have similar problems that you can address in class, rather than writing the same comment on many papers.

LIMIT AND FOCUS THE COMMENTS
Avoid writing in the margins at first to keep from losing track of your major concerns. Compose a note to the student at the end or on another paper and avoid marking errors. The note will give the strengths and weaknesses of the paper (Bean 235).

COMPOSE A THREE-PART COMMENT
Most Writing Across the Curriculum experts recommend a note with three parts.

Strengths: Summarize in sentence form a specific strategy the students does well and could continue in the next draft or paper.

Weaknesses: Respond as a reader, sharing the difficulties you had with the paper. Encourage deeper thinking with specific comments or questions. Students want to know two or three aspects of the paper to improve. Addressing the student as "you" to praise the paper, and using "the paper" to show weaknesses increases the praise and softens the criticism (Smith 256).

Recommendations: Suggest a strategy for what the student should do next to revise. Many professors recommend a visit to the Writing Center in their end comments to work on a thesis, organization, citing sources, or sentence-level errors.

Finally, write legibly or type. Students cannot use your suggestions if they cannot read them.

INSERT MARGINAL COMMENTS
After you have written the end comment, go back to insert marginal comments that point out examples of your end comments. But again limit and focus them. Too many overwhelm the student, who may then pay little attention to any of the comments (McAllister 60).

MAKE STUDENTS REPONSIBLE FOR CORRECTING ERRORS
Marking every error takes too much of your time and keeps students from learning to correct their own errors. To make students responsible for editing their own papers, hand back unreadable papers and warn about errors in the end comment. If you mark both sentence-level concerns about ideas and organization, students may ignore the global issues and revise only the grammar and mechanics. Simply by rewriting the draft, students may clear up errors and awkward sentences as their ideas become clearer.

Another method for papers at the editing stage, recommended by Richard Haswell, is to try minimal marking. Place an X in the margin beside a line of text with an error for the student to find and correct. Or mark only a sample paragraph and instruct the student to edit the rest.

If an error appears many times in the paper, perhaps you can explain the problem quickly or refer the student to the Writing Center for more explanation with this and future drafts. Faculty at the forum found the following errors common in their students' papers: misspelling, incorrect commas, misuse of apostrophes, run-on sentences, and pronoun problems.

FINAL DRAFT
After using comments to coach the writing on a draft, you need only add a sentence or two to the grade on the final paper, mark a rubric, and reduce the grade for uncorrected sentence-level errors. Expect excellence on the revised draft.

by Jill Frey

Works Cited

Bean, John C. Engaging Ideas: The Professor's Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1996. Print.

Haswell, Richard. "Minimal Marking." College English 45 (1983): 600-04. Print.

MacAllister, Joyce. "Responding to Student Writing." New Directions for Teaching and Learning: Teaching Writing in All Disciplines, no. 12. Ed. C.W. Griffin. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, December 1982. Print.

Smith, Summer. "The Genre of the End Comment: Conventions in Teacher Responses to Student Writing." College Composition and Communication. 48.2 (1997): 249-68. Print.