Does anyone have experience with having students evaluate their own drafts of papers? I think it’s important to get students to start thinking of their own work in critical and evaluative terms, to see that is not just an authority saying, “you should do this; it would be better if you could make it like this.” etc.
Last semester I developed a form with the following fields:
This essay is about ____
It’s main argument is ___
It is based on the following readings ___
The main strengths of this essay are ____
Is the argument well developed? How so or how not? ___
Explain how this essay is logical. Explain how this essay could be more clear ___
How can this essay be improved? ____
The intention was to have students start thinking in this way BEFORE coming to see a writing consultant. However, none of the students who were given this form last semester came to see me. Does anyone have feedback on the usefulness or limitations of my handout?
I’ve found that beginning students tend to have a hard time evaluating their own work or thinking critically about it on their own. When I’ve tried exercises like the one you’ve posted here, Diana, I’ve done it in groups where they have been fairly successful. I’ve found that the most important thing about doing things like this is modeling the kind of response you’re looking for which is why, I think, guided peer review works better. Then again, I’ve had experiences with peer review where initial responses were along the lines of “nice title,” or “spell better” and it took quite a bit of work to get students beyond these sorts of responses.
Reply to Mikhail
In “Engaging Ideas” John Bean has a structure for one-on-one conferences with students that looks similar to your form Diana. But it is meant to be used within the meeting, rather than the student considering the questions beforehand. I think it’s useful within that setting. I have found that students reading their paper out loud to each other in pairs is also helpful. And upon evaluation of that process, the students suggested to me that they thought in the future they’d like to try having someone else read their paper to them, so that they could be more alert to the problems within it.
Reply to Deborah