Grammar Article...

The article I read was Responding to Student Writing by Vivian Zamel, and was found in the English Journal. This article beared a lot of resemblance to the Red Pen article we had looked at previously in the fact that it debates whether or not teachers are encouraging prodictive writing when they edit harshly. One thing I found interesting is that a lot of the things we brought up in classroom discussion were included in this excerpt. Zamel points out the fact that teachers often give vague instructions or indecipherable comments that only mean something to the person who is grading it and makes it nearly impossible for the student to know what went wrong or how to fix their paper, this was right along the lines of points we as students made in class. This was just one of the many points brought up in this article that closely related to the comments we made in class. The article suggested rethinking the overzealous marking of a students writing because, as Zamel was trying to emphasize, what we as teachers view as constructive to the writing process, actually can discourage and defeat a student. Meanwhile, their original work with the students fresh point of view becomes lost in trying to please the teacher.