Thursday, February 18, 2010

What are the most valuable types or strategies to commenty you've seen? What worked or didn't work on the comments offered by Dr. Rice?

The most valuable strategies I've seen have to do with a more heavy edit where the editor asks questions, for example, "have you thought about this or that." I do like it when comments are posed in a questioning tone. It makes me still feel like I have control of my text rather than just needing to change things because one reader thought something should be changed.

I also find it helpful in a revision process to have my paper read out loud to me. Well... honestly, I hate it when someone reads my work to me, but it seems to expose things that might be out of place and need to be changed.

As far as the comments I received: when I read some of them, I though, "oh, yeah... good point." In one place, I thought, "Hummm... I guess I took a more casual approach to this assignment than what was expected." Maybe I should have been more formal, but I'm in a rebellious phase against "formal" writing I think. Maybe because of a person at work that tries to use "big words," (nominalizations, usage rather than use, etc. I think he is just trying to sound smart.) He sounds like an idiot a lot of the time. This week my quote is from the front page of the Ethics chapter in Williams by Albert Einstein. "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."

When I read another comment, I thought, "Gosh I wish I had read that (my text) more carefully. That's just bad." About another comment I thought, "No, that's really what I meant. I want to keep that sentence that way."

I am interested in looking at the regular person as a "writer," and not necessarily the student who is studying writing as the "writer."

I like where this paper is going, and I will work on it some more.

Later --

2 comments:

  1. I, too, like some comments posed as questions, but I hadn't considered how feedback provided in that manner leaves the writer feeling in more control of his or her own creative process. I have to admit that most of the comments I leave with my students are directed. However, I do try to engage them in dialogue when I can. It's interesting, though, I've found many of them are so well-trained to "right" or "wrong" that they don't always know what to do with a question. When I ask, "have you thought about . . .," the answer is usually a simple yes or no. Many simply don't feel empowered enough to engage once an instructor provides feedback. I'll have to make a more concerted effort to try to get the students engaged with questions in the next couple of assignments and see if it makes a difference!

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  2. I agree--comments that about the content are most useful for graduate students, generally. Thinking about the tone, of course, too, is something that is difficult to do until you receive feedback. Tone is easy to change, of course. Thinking carefully about nominalizations is good practice for what you're doing in this course. Looking forward to seeing your revision.

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