Yesterday, we discussed pointing out mistakes as opportunities. “Failure is the mother of success” and all that (thank you, JuanJuan). I have to say it—this reminds me again of Macrorie. Particularly, it reminds me of the point he made regarding the existence of various truths and the inability to know THE ultimate truth (see my last blog entry). The phenomenon of “comma splice” is in one sense an error. In the context of learning, however, that is not a helpful way to think about it. An equally truthful and more productive characterization of “comma splice” is as opportunity. Calling comma splices “opportunities” is not a clever way of talking around the issue. Both ways of thinking are true, though each way has its own appropriate modus operandi because each way only reflects part of the truth.
Now I want to move on from the facets of truth that opportunity and error represent and talk a little about what we should do with those opportunities/errors when we find them in student papers. Dr. Kemp mentioned the idea that criticism needs to be accompanied by a program of remediation in order for it to work. As he wrote in our notes: “The reliance on error in teacher feedback is a function of how easy it is to find and tag error and how difficult it is to discover, explain, and remediate rhetorical dysfunction.” Ok. That sounds plausible. It also sounds like it goes along with Shaughnessy’s idea that a teacher of BW students “might well begin by trying to understand the logic of their mistakes in order to determine at what point or points along the developmental path error should or can become a subject for instruction” (395). But if you do that, don’t you need to know the student in at least a minimally personal sense? How can you track a specific pattern of errors (excuse me, opportunities) in a student’s work if you don’t know that you are grading that particular student’s work from one assignment to the next?
Shaughnessy says that there is little that is “random or illogical” in BW student writing. What we may perceive as “chaos of error” actually has a method to its madness (390). But how can you learn to recognize that pattern as a teacher if you don’t at least know that this specific writing quirk X always appears in Student #42’s work? It might not be obvious enough for you to recognize it without first knowing you are looking at the work of Student #42. Right?
I would be glad to take the credit for the saying "failure is the mother of success,' but I would be caught lying.
ReplyDeleteBut as to your comments, I feel the same way, but it's hard to keep track of the progress of the students. I just assume that their mistakes will be pointed out multiple times by all of us and that they will mot make them again, or at least a percentage of them. Cheers.
I think when Shaughnessy discusses that there's a method to the errors she means that there are specific reasons as to why students make these errors. Why do they place commas in certain places? Why do they abuse subject-verb agreement? Or whatever else is bugging us as we're grading papers. If we look at it from their writing perspective (and obviously we don't know that particular student or what they have or have not learned), we should be able to see why they made that error and correct the logic behind it. We need to make them unlearn their current thinking process that is steering them in the wrong direction. It's not necessarily recognizing a pattern with a certain student but recognizing what prompted them to make the error in the first place.
ReplyDeleteI think you bring up a good reason for the side of getting to know the student versus anonymous grader so you can help them specifically in their writing to omit comma splices or equally tragic errors. If we as the teachers were able to do this sort of micro teaching, and if the students were actually willing to come in for this kind of help, education would go a lot further, be more effective, and we on the whole would be more pleased. However, with the basic writing of 1800+ students that we who are grading 1301 receive, the utopian system of knowing the student and helping them with their individual problems over the length of a semester just is not possible. I know that you obviously were not suggesting this for 1301, but all I have to go off of is my current and only teaching/grading experience. However, I think you have a point for someone to consider who is serious about changing student writing...one kid at a time.
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