#Focuswriter not responding how to#

On rough drafts, comments should honestly assess where the draft is now and offer encouragement of where it could go.Differentiate comments on drafts from those on final essays.

To avoid these issues - and to stave off comment overload - Sommers suggests that teachers begin by asking themselves, “What do I want my students to learn, and how will my comments help them learn?” A teacher can write seventeen comments on a short draft, but a student probably won’t learn seventeen different lessons. Why should the student bother to stay engaged? Getting it Write: Six Ways to Teach through Comments In both of these cases, the student is left wondering what the teacher wants her to change, rather than focusing on her own argument in the essay. When “vague,” “frag,” “weak argument,” or the classic “be specific!” pepper a page, a student can easily misunderstand and disregard what her teacher is trying to say - especially when she sees the same general comments sprinkled throughout her classmate’s paper. Too often, a teacher’s comments are not specific to the paper at hand.When a teacher both corrects the grammar in a sentence and asks the student to develop the idea further, the writer may be confused about which suggestion to respond to: If she corrects the grammar, then the sentence should be “finished,” but if she changes the sentence, then the grammar corrections may no longer apply. Comments often give students contradictory messages.But two common mistakes can prevent these lessons from hitting home: Teachers’ comments are supposed to show students where they have communicated their arguments well, and where they need to revise.

#Focuswriter not responding how to#

Her key advice? A teacher’s response to a student’s work can play a leading role in the student’s development as a writer - but to leverage that potential, a teacher needs to understand where and how much to comment, and how to engage the student in the feedback process.