3 Chapter 3: Personal Narratives

Section 3.1 Emily Mullikin: Students Researcher

Feedback to Field Experience Mentees: Inspired by Joelle Pederson

While researching the question, “What is effective feedback for student writers?” I referenced Joelle Pederson’s article, “Revision As Dialogue: Exploring Question Posing in Writing Response” in which Pederson references three types of questions most effectively used for student writing feedback. Viewing the student as an author rather than a student was a pivotal moment for the efficiency of our research regarding writing feedback. This semester, I thoughtfully responded to the students assigned to me in a way that would hopefully make them write more confidently and be more receptive to feedback. While exploring these power-affirming, power-concealing, and power-preserving questions, I discovered a combination of these questions seemed more effective, disguising the role of authority or judgement when writing. Here is a small example of my research:

I used mostly power-affirming questions and occasionally used power-concealing and power-preserving questions. Student number one asked “Is this placed in the correct place? Or do I even need it my piece?” and I responded using a power-concealing question. “Maybe you could reword this and add it to the conclusion to add length and depth. It is a great sentence but I think it would be better in a paragraph rather than on its own?” I also used this method of questioning when responding to student number two when he wrote,“worthless as taking notes of a piano,” and I responded, “Do you think we could say this in a smoother way? Maybe something like “something worthless such as (or like) learning notes on piano…”

With student two specifically, I often used power-concealing questions, sometimes focusing on his grammar and mechanics, asking him if there was a better way to phrase some of his awkward or repetitive phrases. I also use power preserving questions, aiming students to reconsider the conventional models for their writing, like their introductions and conclusions. I also used power affirming questions that were more open ended when responding to almost every student. I asked student two, “How can we change this to make it more impactful? such as “The importance of Education” “The evolution of education and its importance” I also referenced Pederson’s article when asking all of the questions. I asked student number three specifically, “Could we use examples to tie the ideas of this paragraph together more clearly?How can you combine some sentences for more effective ideas?”

Other teaching methods used by previous teachers also helped give these students successful feedback. By using the “bless or pressed” method and “author’s agenda’s,” I was able to focus on what the students wanted me to directly address in a more or less critical manner.

Works Cited

Section 3.2 Cierra Poe: Student Researcher

Student Agency Through Rhetorical Patterns

In an instance, student writing can be transformed from basic into critically acclaimed in the eyes of their teachers. Personally, while undergoing a field experience project with a local school, in which I analyzed the effects of different types of feedback, I learned that grammatical and structural revisions can elevate student work, but the real greatness comes from the depth at which students think about their essay topics. While reading the revisions students made after my feedback, I realized that questions asking about the common rhetorical patterns of cause/effect and compare/contrast led to a deeper understanding of their sources and their topic at hand and gave students a sense of agency in their writing. Questions about the depth of their writing using cause/effect and compare/contrast questions, rather than about grammar, spelling, or structure, aided in the students’ ability to pull better evidence out of the texts and explain that evidence in a way that almost any audience could understand. These questions are more easily understandable to students because they encompass skills mastered in elementary school. These skills, although seemingly basic, can add lots of depth to students writing when talking about more difficult to understand subjects. Students are giving a lot more agency with these types of questions, because they are not as confusing as other feedback styles that use ambiguous words such as “analyze, evaluate, or examine.”

During this field experience opportunity, students were working on essays sculpted from reading scholarly sources or accounts from philosophers. While experimenting with my feedback style, I started asking students to dig deeper into their research to find out what they were most interested in. They started to revise their texts with better evidence for their opinions based off of their close readings. For example, one student’s paper was focusing on two aspects of advancements through time: the advancements themselves and the people who created them. I asked her how questions like “why and how?” can shape her thesis when applied to the facts such as “who, what, when, and where?”. In other words, I asked her to explain the effects of the advancements she mentioned. In order to get all of those questions answered, she chose to address how pioneers in innovation helped further sciences and the discoveries we make today. Instead of just focusing on the facts of the matter, she was able to take facts from the articles she read and create a more well thought out thesis that was intriguing and understandable to her audience by focusing on explaining “why and how” these facts came about and how they effected the trajectory of future innovations.

In another student’s paper, she explained the differences between economic and ethical wealth and the effects these types have on someone and the world around them. Her first draft included mostly personal accounts and some accounts of celebrities who focused on money vs. aspects of ethics. While these examples explained the difference between the two for her audience, she didn’t really explain how these aspects effected the people in the examples and the world around them. I asked her to reread her research and find other articles that displayed the differences as well as the effects of these matters, essentially asking her to compare and contrast the aspects of wealth and examine the cause-and-effect relationships of the aspects. Through this method of feedback, she understood that the paper’s thesis needed to be reexamined in order to show not just the basics of “Who, what, when, and where,” but also “why and how” these aspects matter and are effective.