How To Evaluate Student Writing Excerpt from Erika Lindemann's A Rhetoric for Writing Teachers 2nd Edition. Through their evaluatory comments and symbols teachers help to create an environment for writing. Establishing a climate of trust, in which students feel free to explore topics of interest to them without fear that their thoughts will be attacked, is essential. Risk-taking, trying new behaviors as one writes, and stretching one's use of language and toying with it are important for growth in writing.
Goal setting is also an important process in the development of students.
Goals need to be concrete and within reach, and students need to see evidence of their progress. Teachers, then, should urge students to work toward a limited number of goals at a time. Writing improvement does not occur in isolation because writing is related to speaking, listening, reading, and all other avenues of communication, including the experience of living. Prewriting activities, responding to literature, class discussion, revisions, developing a sensitivity to self and others, experiences both in and out of the English classroom affect growth in writing.