The style of teacher’s
comments on student’s literary works is very vague and in fact, often times,
alters the purpose of the writer. The writer goes from wanting to express his/
her own thoughts to wanting to follow the style and guidelines of the
professor. Sommers intends to help teachers
improve their comments on student essays and written works. This will help students
be able to revise their papers better instead of just "patching up” their writing. The
author uses two examples of some written teacher comments of student essays to
demonstrate how little specific teachers are when they revise student papers. The
author points out comments like “awkward” and “word choice” on the paper to
emphasize her point. Sommers mentions, how can a student effectively revise
their paper when teachers provide little detail to their comments and
contradict themselves.
The author concludes that
just how teachers always tell students to be more specific while writing they
should also be more specific themselves and try to help the student develop
their writing ideas instead of trying to make them do what they want.
Comments help writers
understand what they cannot see by editing a paper themselves. It helps give a
different point of view and understand how he/she can revise it for the
audience to be able to understand. Generic comments are not useful in essays
because it sends a message that makes the student think that all they have to
do is edit the paper instead of develop their ideas. I agree with the authors
point of view because as a student I have often been confused with teachers
comments on my papers, I think students would write better papers if professors
also included betters comments.
