Newsgroups: bit.listserv.mbu-l
Date:         Sat, 29 Aug 1992 14:22:29 ADT
Comments:     <29AUG92.15561134.0026.MUSIC@UNB.CA>
From:         HUNT000 <HUNT@UNB.CA>
Subject:      comments

I'm so happy to see this said that I want to repeat it: "There is
no research support for writing extensive comments on students'
papers as a means of improving their writing."  Thank you, David
Schwalm.  This is an issue that goes beyond oral comments to the
whole central matter of how people come to act like writers.  You
can fix a PIECE OF WRITING by commenting on it; the extent to
which that changes a writer's behavior next time is extremely
questionable.   "Do I want," David asks, "to invest in a $5000
NeXT so that I can respond to  papers as ineffectively in a high
tech environment as I did in a low tech  environment?"  I'm sorry
to hear David's not teaching -- I sure hope an Associate Provost
for Academic Programs has some input into what happens between
students and teachers.

And then Michael Marx says, "One point I would add about orally
recorded (NeXT or otherwise) comments is that I think they
detract from the students critical reading skills.  I find that
in their future classes, students used to taped feedback have
difficulty deciphering written comments.  They are unable to
prioritize suggestions and criticism that may be more evident in
oral comments through repetition and intonation.  Given the
important cognitive connections between reading and writing, I
think taped comments may create a gap here rather than bridge
one."   I'm happy to have that experience to cite to my
colleagues: thank you.

But I think Wes Chapman's question is the important one: "It
sounds from what you say like your disagreement isn't so much
with electronic commenting as with writing out comments in
general.  Is that so?  If so, how do you manage to find the time
to schedule conferences with every student over every paper
(something I did a few times as a grad student teaching one class
but couldn't possibly manage now that I teach three)?  Or do you
do something else altogether?"

David Schwalm's response to that question interests me a great
deal, and I'd like to know more about his "complicated procedure
in which all students in a class wrote on a common assignment,
were collectively involved in the elaboration of the assignment
and the development of the criteria by which their papers would
be judged."  I'm working with something similar in some ways.  In
my case I usually try to put students in a position to have
something to say to their colleagues that they don't know, are
interested in, or have reason to want to know, and then create
venues in which their audience can RESPOND rather than comment --
that is, by asking questions, building on the new ideas,
proceeding to research based on the new information, and so
forth.  In other words, I try to make their writing functional,
for everyone involved.  Most writing is never commented on at
all; it's used.  That's how we learn oral language, after all --
and that's how we learn to handle media like the one we're all
working in here.
                                    -- Russ
                                _~|__
Russell A. Hunt            _~|__)_ __)~|__   Learning and Teaching
Department of English      )_ __)_|_)__ __)    Development Officer
St. Thomas University        |  )____) |        EMAIL: hunt@unb.ca
Fredericton, New Brunswick___|____|____|____/  FAX: (506) 450-9615
E3B 5G3   CANADA          \                / PHONE: (506) 452-7700
                       ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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