The more students look at their own writing and writing by their peers, the more opportunities they have to develop a vocabulary for talking about writing, an important goal of FYS. That way, when they go home and face their own writing, it will be easier for them to identify similarities between what you discussed in class and what you want them to do on their own. Choose a paper, that is, that looks like the kind of paper written by most students in the class (again, this is why it’s helpful to get an initial sense of your papers before you do anything else). To have such a discussion, consider choosing a middle-of-the-road paper: not the best and not the worst. A good discussion of an interesting paper can save you a lot of ink.
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An easy way to save yourself writing the same thing over and over is to look at representative examples of student writing in class.” etc.) and then offer advice for revision (“When you revise, my advice is that you focus first on. It’s also common to begin the end comment with positive feedback (“What I liked about your paper. There are a lot of different ways to organize comments, but probably the most common is to have marginal comments on specific issues and then a general comment at the end, summarizing the marginal comments and highlighting what’s most important. Ask the kinds of questions and give the kinds of advice that you find helpful from readers of your writing. “) Don’t hesitate to draw on your own experience as a writer. “ or “As a reader, I had difficulty following the discussion here because.
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(“When I read your paper, what I noticed was. Think of yourself as an interested reader, i.e., as someone who wants to understand, someone whose job it is to help the writer say what he/she wants to say. One of the most helpful things you can do for a student (or any writer, for that matter) is to say back to him/her what you see the paper trying to say/do.
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Use your initial assessment of your students’ writing as a whole to guide your comments on individual papers.Instead, consider what you notice about the set of papers in general: e.g., are there aspects of the assignment that the class as a whole seems to resist or simply get wrong? What does the writing say about strengths/weaknesses of the class as a whole? What do students seem to come into the class knowing how to do as readers/writers? What kinds of things do they appear to need help with? (If it’s early in the term, consider whether there are individual writers who stick out as being, at least potentially, in need of additional help and arrange to meet with them ASAP.) Resist the temptation to do a lot of writing in the margins on this initial quick read. When you receive a new set of papers, read through all of them quickly to get a sense of the ways in which students have (and have not) understood the assignment.If you’re teaching with writing for the first time, here are some strategies you might find helpful for responding to drafts: