by Alyssa Brown, Sociology, ’18–19

Sometimes I read students’ papers, and I imagine how I would write it to make it sound “better” or how I would organize it to make it flow in the way I think would make sense. I think about the way that I would write their paper if it were a topic I was writing on. When this happens I stop and remind myself:

This is their paper, not yours.

As a writing-intensive teaching assistant, I have learned a lot about how to help students improve their writing. I have learned how to give constructive feedback without overwhelming the student, I have learned the importance of praise, and I have learned how to hold conferences with students about their writing so that they walk away with ideas about how to continue to shape their paper. One important thing I have also learned is how to guide students through the writing process while preserving their ownership over their work.

While it may be easy to explicitly tell students how to write their papers and what content they should include based on what I would do myself, it is truly a disservice to them. Not only does it communicate that their work is not truly their own creation, but it inhibits them from learning that writing is a process that takes multiple drafts and reflection to achieve the final paper that they plan to turn in.

Instead, I remind myself that constructive feedback allows them to think about their own work and develop it in their own way. I find that feedback that expresses curiosity towards a student’s topic, asking them to expand in some areas and perhaps narrow in other areas, is much more helpful in allowing students to think about their topic and how to tailor it. Sometimes students write sentences that seem out of place or confusing, so I ask them how it fits into their argument or their paragraph, which encourages them to sit with their work and think about how to make it clearer. Finally, being sure to pick a few points for the student to work on allows them to focus and reflect on a few areas of their paper without overwhelming them.

I find that feedback that expresses curiosity towards a student’s topic, asking them to expand in some areas and perhaps narrow in other areas, is much more helpful in allowing students to think about their topic and how to tailor it.

I find that that these tips for giving feedback help the student retain ownership of their paper while also helping them improve their writing in the long term. While the feedback helps them acquire some skills that enable them to reach a general audience by the discipline’s standards, they are able to do so in a way that allows them to produce something that is 100% their own. What I would do with their paper if I were writing it is irrelevant because it is simply not my paper to write. My job is to give students constructive feedback and to provide them with the tools that help develop their writing skills; the rest is up to them.