To be honest, one of the reason that dragged me to watch take 20 was I didn't expect much from it. I believe that anyone can make progree in writing through endless practice, but I still think that to be a good writer takes natural knack. So, before I put the disc into the DVD player, I was thinking "hmm.. professors like you teaching how to write must be born with some kind of supernatural talent and ability, and how do you know what others are struggling?" Soon, I felt strange relief and genuin sympathy by listening to them saying "I was total stupid." And, by the end of the video, I found myself taking the note pressing the pause button on the remote control every once in a while.
One of the things that made me feel guilty recently was grading 1301 assignments. To me, every writing is a product of the students' creativity, which I could dare call "art." So, it sounds horrible that I give scores to their "art" with meaningless characters, which became everything to students. Also, I can't spend too much time on each assignment because I need time to study my stuff, too. Then, I feel even more guilty about not being able to fully respond to those papers and moving on. The thing that I learn from this video regarding to my issue was what Nancy Sommers said; try to think the purpose of reponse at the point. Her remark helped me to think that even if I feed their mouths full with an awful lot of comments, realistically thinking, it might not be effective and efficient to students. What if their stomach get clogged? Or what if they choose not to eat any more? And this answer led me to another question; to what extent can I expect from my students and how can I adapt various students' needs and expectations?
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Eunjeong:
Knowing how much to respond to student papers is one of the most important skills a writing teacher must master. I would agree with Sommers that one way to know how much and what to say is to ask what you are trying to accomplish. All responses will have multiple goals, such as encouraging the student, pointing out repeated mechanical errors in the writing, probing for more analytic thinking, admonishing laziness, etc. But if you can determine what are the most important goals in responding to writing and then focus your comments on those goals, you will probably have more meaningful comments.
I would suggest also letting the student know what your goals are in the response. You might write at the beginning, "Joe. I notice that you have many good insights, but sometimes it is difficult to unravel them because of punctuation errors. Therefor, I have marked several in your paper and explained why they make the passage confusing, and what could be done to eliminate the confusion."
Following such an explanation, the individual comments will make sense to the student and will not seem nitpicky because you have explained why you are making them and how they affect the overall quality.
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