“Responding” Summary

“Responding” Summary

            “Responding” by Richard Straub is about how to look over and review a peer’s piece of writing. It gives examples of what to look for and how to correct and provide examples without sounding stingy. He first tells us to think of ourselves as the writer. If we are correcting a friend’s paper we shouldn’t only give examples because they are our friends and we should be giving them constructive criticism. We shouldn’t try to over correct everything though. He tells us to make a mental checklist of all the things we should look for. Richard starts to get so into how we should correct papers that he even tells us where we should write our comments on the page. The margin is where most teachers like to put comments so that is where we should all place them and it doesn’t make the paper look messy. We should not sound like a teacher; we should sound like our original selves. As the corrector we need to be careful not to comment too much and make our positive and negative comments equal in how many we give. The point is to help the writer so writing two or three words will not help improve their writing. The best thing to do is to write seven to eight to really let the reader now what they did well or what they can improve on.  Our comments should be complete thoughts and rich in detail. They need to prove a point to allow them to be helpful to the writer when they go back and look at them. Overall, correcting a paper takes time and requires thought. It is not something that you can just scribble words down and expect it to serve its point. Correct papers as if you would be the one getting the paper back.