The Article “About responding to student writing” by Peter Elbow, Attempts to establish guidelines regarding the critique of student papers.
One of the ideas I really liked was, in essence, to ask the student to write about writing. This allows students to introspect and begin the process of metacognition in a safe and healthy way that does not involve any kind of epistemological violence. The key takeaway is, there is no right way or wrong way to approach writing, what matters is the objective and whether or not we can help the student to complete that objective. By allowing the students to write about their process of writing we become more aware of this students Literacy narrative and subsequently his/her objectives and weaknesses when endeavoring to write. It is important to note that this process should not be undertaken without humility.
When critiquing student work, humility is paramount and can be conveyed through the language we use and how we construct our sentences during a critique. An example of this given in one of the articles is to say, “this is unconvincing for me” instead of “this is unconvincing”. One sounds like a Universal statement, these are often hard to prove, for Example, ALL cats are black, or all X’s are P’s. The other sounds more like an existential statement, which can be personally true but not generally true, For Example, Some people are orange or Some T’s are Z’s.
Lately I’ve been thinking that perhaps, as writing mentors, we are constantly at the intersection of professional and close-personal relationships. Close personal relationships are developed through personal disclosures, which can happen through writing. At the same time, in my opinion, Professional relationships depend upon the prioritization of the objective above the narrative, it thrives in clearly set boundaries which do not necessarily need to depend upon the close-personal aspects of relationships. This means we constantly walk a fine line between maintaining professionalism, and indulging in self-disclosures that further the objectives of mentorship. At high enough levels I imagine writing mentorship to feel like performing social surgery.
The only way to learn anything new is to talk to people at least some of the time. One draft, with only a few people interacting with the ideas, theories or narrative being conveyed, turns the process of writing back into a solo affair. This is new to me, but I love this framing of writing as a social activity, I’d strengthen this culture through more overt practices too, such as granting the opportunity to write more drafts, or advising the student to seek advise via the writers studio.
References
“About Responding to Student Writing”, an Essay by Peter Elbow, Published, unknown date
ENG 484, John Buckley, Perusal1.3
Bruv, I genuinely don’t know what to say about this one. I kept waiting for the code switching to end and for the pure SAE to coalesce and solidify but it didn’t. It sounded like the writer oscillated from Crow era AAVE to Jamaican Patois, to Louisiana creole all in the same paper while using SAE to punctuate it all. I’m glad the speaker had a message aimed at the hegemonies that most will never wrestle their lives away from, but the fact remains that SAE is the standard medium of exchange in the knowledge markets.
When communicating across language & cultural barriers, understanding the form and syntax that your communications should take, makes said communication more effective. Have any of you ever heard of the tower of Babel?
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