Feedback:

Dear Student C,

Your essay response to Rose’s article was self-reflective and engaging. You successfully demonstrated what from the essay resonated with your own experience and process.

Where you lost points in the rubric were in demonstrating an understanding of Rose’s primary message. For example, the first paragraph of your essay conflates the rules related to guidelines of a specific assignment with the rules that Rose is discussing (rules present in an individual’s process in tackling the writing assignment). This distinction is key to unlocking the purpose of Rose’s essay.

I’d be happy to discuss comprehension of the readings more with you, in regards to identifying the central arguments being made, so that your essays and writing can  respond more directly to these arguments.

Best,

Jai

Behind the Scenes:

I found providing feedback to this essay quite difficult! I chose to not focus on grammar and sentence structure and rather engaged with the ideas presented in the essay. This was due to the prompt focusing on responding to Rose’s message or underlying purpose and my sense that the student did not fully grasp Rose’s message.

I felt it necessary to start at the point of reading comprehension since writing is about relaying ideas and engaging with ideas and the prompt specifically requires an understanding of ideas present in the reading. My primary concern with my approach is that I don’t want to have a negative impact on the confidence of the student in terms of how well they understand ‘college-level’ writing. Whether I personally were to help a student with comprehension or they were to work with the writing center – it would definitely require some 1:1 time, which may feel like that is asking above and beyond of what a pass/fail class asks for.

In terms of my own teaching thus far, this struggle resonates in that feedback often inherently has a sense of continuity and engagement with a particular exercise but sometimes a project is just over and we are moving on. I would love to think through this more in terms of how next quarter is organized and also in relation to some things that have come up in presentations, like incorporating reading into the curriculum. Both reading comprehension and revision of writing seem intricately linked here.