Premise: To respond to in-progress writing is to intervene in the writer's process. Such intervention should help the process move forward and should give the writer clearer notions of both what to revise and how to revise. Thus, responding is something quite different from grading. The best response writers can receive is that which will make them want to keep writing. 

Premise: Because our educational culture is so preoccupied with error, we need to "go back to school" and learn how to praise. Paul B. Diederich [1] concluded from his research in evaluation for the Educational Testing Service that "noticing and praising whatever a student does well improves writing more than any kind or amount of correction of what he does badly, and that it is especially important for the less able writers who need all the encouragement they can get." 

Seven Types of Comments:

1. Directive

2. Evaluative

3. Advisory

4. Interpretive

5. Descriptive

6. Directive Questions (Socratic)

7. Open-ended Questions (discovery)

According to the research of Richard Straub and Ronald F. Lunsford [2], inexperienced writing instructors tend to write type 1 and 2 comments, experienced writing instructors tend to write type 4-7 comments, and both experienced and inexperienced instructors use type 3 comments.

Seven Response Strategies[3]:

1. Sayback: Say back in your own words what you think the writer is getting at.

2. Movies of the Reader's Mind: Describe what happens inside your head as you read the writer's words.

3. Pointing: Point out which words, phrases, passages, or features stick in your mind. This is especially useful after hearing a paper read but not seeing the text.

4. What's Almost Said or Implied: Tell the writer what is almost said, implied--what you would like to hear more about.

5. Center of Gravity: Identify what you sense to be the source of energy, the focal point, the generative center of the paper (not necessarily the main point).

6. Controlling Idea, Unity, Organization, Development, Coherence, Voice, Point of View, Attitude toward the Reader, Style, Diction, Mechanics: Describe these features of the writing.

7. Believing and Doubting: Believe (or pretend to believe) everything the writer has written. Be the writer's ally and describe what you see. Then doubt everything (be the "devil's advocate") and describe what you see.

Straub and Lunsford suggest following these guidelines when responding to student writing:

1. Respond to student writing in well-developed marginal and/or end comments.

2. Focus on large conceptual issues, as opposed to sentence-level concerns.

3. Respond to student writing at various stages in the writing process.

4. Mark relatively few grammatical and mechanical errors, and save treatment of error until late in the writing process.

5. Individualize my comments to the text at hand.

6. Focus my comments on a limited number of concerns in a given paper.

7. Balance positive and negative comments.

8. Allow my developing sense of the students' identities to personalize my comments.

9. Focus on the students as learners as well as on the texts they are producing.

10. Ask more questions and give more descriptions of my reading process; be less directive and evaluative.

[1] Donald Daiker, "Learning to Praise," Writing and Response: Theory, Practice, and Research , ed. Chris M. Anson (Urbana, IL: NCTE, 1989): 105.

[2] Twelve Readers Reading: Responding to College Student Writing (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton, 1995).

[3] Adapted from Mara Holt, "The Value of Written Peer Criticism," College Composition and Communication 43.3 (1992): 385.