Effective commentary on student writing pairing praise with suggestion

Abstract

Writing instructors aim to have students produce clean and concise pieces of writing throughout their college careers and beyond. I aimed to instill this goal in my students through a pairing of praise and suggestion within my commentary on their essays throughout the Spring 2013 semester at Youngstown State University. The selected pairing of praise and suggestion was chosen based on several key readings, explained below, and this pairing was meant to praise students to build confidence in writing while also probing them for further exploration and success in their written work. In order to accurately track the success or failure of the method of pairing praise and suggestion, I kept track of students' initial graded final drafts and revised second final drafts of essays submitted as a final essay at the end of the semester. I analyzed my comments and saw how these comments prompted revision from students (or did not prompt revision, in several cases.) The study I conducted is presented in detail in the following chapters. Both examples of successful and unsuccessful revision are demonstrated so that the full scope of the study and its resulting pieces of writing can be seen by readers. In addition to the actual student samples shown, methods of how to better serve and aid students in the process of writing and revising writing are also noted. The goal of the study is to help students understand what revision is, understand how to go about tackling the often seemingly daunting task of revision, and understand how to utilize the comments of praise and suggestion instructors make upon student work in order to obtain a clean and successful revision. In addition to aiming toward helping students, this study also aimed to help instructors become more effective at commenting and aiding students in the revision process.