Written Commentary

            After reading McGlaun’s article “Reflections on Teacher Comments: Lessons from the Tutorial” I cannot help but think about teacher comments on essays and my own experiences with them.  At this point I can think about essay comments from a couple of points of view; comments from teachers in high school and now a number of professors in college, trying to write my own comments for this class, and observing appointments at the Writing Center. To some extent, I am questioning how valuable these comments even are.

            The comments I remember most from high school came from only two teachers.  One taught me how to use a semi-colon, which for some reason teachers had neglected to explain up until my sophomore year. He saved me from a bad run-on sentence habit but he did so by leaving a bright yellow folder about punctuation, the semi-colon edition, on my desk in class. I imagine he followed up by commenting on my use in future writing but that is less memorable.  My other teacher had a somewhat unconventional practice of keeping a tally on his rubric of how many times passive voice, and other pet peeves of his, appeared in the graded paper. I do think that this helped me become a better writer, especially because it made me conscious of particular aspects of writing, but again it was not exactly teacher comments in the traditional sense.

            Thus far in college none of my professors have made much of an impression on me through their comments. I tend to remember them as easy or tough graders but I am unable to recall many specific comments that made me change my writing or drew much of a reaction from me at all.

            Now that I am taking this class and observing at the Writing Center I am markedly more aware of written comments. I have discovered from trying to write comments on papers that it can be rather difficult to strike the right balance but what I have also discovered is that being at the Writing Center and being able to talk to the writer in person seems to be a much more productive and valuable activity.

            I suppose it is my own fault for not putting my teacher’s comments to better use, maybe I just need to stop being lazy, but I tend not to be significantly impacted by what they write on my papers.  I read comments over when I get a paper back, consider what they say, check the grade, and if I am satisfied with it I pretty much forget about it. I find that I do not have the time to pain over what a teacher writes on my paper and apparently I do not have too much space left in my head to store their comments. Unless a comment is specific and clear and I feel that it is a worthwhile suggestion or correction, I tend not to worry about it.  I cross the paper off my to-do list and at best I might glance at it again when I have another paper to write for that professor.

            This all makes me wonder if it is just me or if there is something slightly useless about written paper commentary. The verbal activity that takes place at the Writing Center seems to be many times more productive than a few sentences written at the end of a paper. Also, McGlaun’s comments about students not being able to read tone and her attempt to tape record her paper grading process make me think that there might be a better way, and that the way might be through a simple face-to-face interaction.