reading response to Johnson and Freeland

Reading Johnson’s “Critical Reading and Response: Experimenting with Anonymity in Draft Workshops” was eye-opening on a number of levels. First, though I know that peer groups are well-established in the field and have been proven to be effective by years of practice and research, my personal experience with them has been rather poor. As nearly every English class I’ve had since 7th grade has incorporated the peer editing process to some extent, I’m extremely familiar with it, yet I can’t say that I’ve ever felt like it improved my writing in any obvious way. Perhaps I’m just a pretentious snob, but I never really took seriously the comments and suggestions of my peer writers and generally regarded their ideas with suspicion, dismissing their them as the artificial product of a process where they simply had to say something to fulfill the class task. I can’t speak for others, but for me, peer review has been an interesting if not particularly enlightening exercise that has yet to provide any demonstrably useful information to me, and these feelings of peer editing often being busy work undeniably color my cynicism toward its effectiveness in a general sense.

That said, reading through Johnson’s article, it’s clear that peer review is helpful to the great majority of (probably less pretentious) writers, and the extent to which it appears to be busy work could easily be explained by the fact that most peer editors are afraid to say anything terribly critical in their commentary. In particular, Johnson’s use of anonymous reviewers seems to be an idea worth pursuing, and I definitely know that I’ve both given and received comments that were so vague and bland as to be practically useless out of discomfort with being asked to evaluate the work of a writer who is sitting right next to me and who will read my comments in my presence. The anonymous review process circumvents those particular problems and seems to open up the route of communication to honest and forthright feedback without fear of recrimination of any sort. There might be inherent problems that I don’t yet see, but I can’t really think of any reason not to use such a system if one is comfortable enough with the technology needed to put those ideas into practice.

Further, Johnson’s attention to establishing the criteria for proper peer editing seems particularly helpful. Though I hadn’t considered it (probably because of my general disregard for the peer editing process), it is somewhat unreasonable to expect that every student will enter the classroom knowing how to read and give helpful comments to a piece of writing, and the time that Johnson spends practicing the editing process through showing actual drafts and walking through the process with students would seem to make clear that the usual “this is good” and “I like it” comments would be unhelpful to a writer. In fact, I was struck by just how specific and probing the questions were that Johnson cited, as his students were clearly addressing higher order concerns that show a remarkable depth of insight into the structure of effective writing. Similarly, having this whole process unfold in a public online forum seems to insure that students actually give thoughtful feedback, as the social pressure inherent in the situation would push them not to turn in comments that show that they aren’t taking the task as seriously as everyone else, not being too insubstantial nor too harsh in their appraisals. In this case, the social pressure of the situation would seem to create a context where the work takes on extra meaning and the failure to complete the task takes on extra authority.

Freeland’s “Awakening the Writer’s Identity through Conferences” was similarly revelatory, though in a somewhat opposite way. Having worked as a psychotherapist, I would characterize her participant/observer approach to instruction as something akin to a “writing counselor” (or a tutor), someone who doesn’t exactly impose her values on the student writer but who reflects, models, and clarifies objectives through questioning in an unassuming and unimposing way. This egalitarian approach is fascinating, and I’d like to think it is effective; I just wonder how easy it is to simply expect the student to assume the “writer” persona without being forced to do so. I’m not yet entirely sold on the idea that simply setting up a free and open learning environment will provide the transformational spark needed to create such a chemical reaction in the student, though it certainly seems to work in Freeland’s classrooms.

Though I don’t have the benefit of watching these processes unfold over the course of an entire semester, my experiences as the Kent writing center indicate that some students would be resistant to not being given more active instruction. I agree that it’s ideal to sit back and allow the student to claim this process for his or her own, giving as little instruction as possible and pushing the student to develop his or her own authoritative voice, but I wonder how students who are too insecure or unwilling to accept that responsibility progress through the class. Perhaps I give students too little credit and am too quick to provide direction, but I tend to assume that some writers will need more hands-on instruction than others. What do you do if they simply aren’t identifying the variables that add up to effective writing, despite your questioning and mirroring techniques? This approach seems to be at least somewhat at odds with Johnson’s, as it almost seems that Freeland would see the pronounced emphasis on peer reviewing as potentially stifling the emerging voice of a writer, with too many hands in the molding process.

Finally, Freeland’s use of portfolio grading is intriguing and probably a natural outgrowth of her extensive use of writing conferences seems to establish the context of collaboration between students and teacher. Though it’s difficult for me to believe that this approach creates the impression that “the notion of grades seems unnatural,” as I still assume that most of our students are there more to get a good grade than become a good writer, I think the goal of creating a context where students are rewarded for revising their body of work throughout the semester is something to consider. The idea of negotiating a grade with a student still seems a bit intimidating to me, as I fear that I would be too easily persuaded by the student’s good faith arguments, similar to how I often feel uncomfortable giving negative feedback in peer editing groups. Still, I’ve often been struck by how most students seem to have an intuitive sense of how good or how lacking their writing is, and Freeland’s assertion that disagreements rarely occur seems reasonable to me. In the end, as a lazy person, I’m certainly drawn to Freeland’s less-is-more ideology, but I may not be ready for such a hands-off, non-directive approach quite yet.