Follow-Up on 10/13's Class Discussion

In class today, we talked about several different aspects of end commentary. One thing that stood out to me was the question of how important end commentaries are to students. My Organic Chemistry professor always emphasizes that he is not looking at how students start out in the beginning of the semester, but rather, how they finish it--their progress. I think this applies to writing as well. I believe that professors look to see how a student progresses, regardless of the subject field. Paying attention to end commentaries can be really helpful in improving grades and improving writing techniques. I can personally attest to this. In my Sociology 101 class, my professor assigns four memos for the semester. These memos are just basically meant to show our understanding of the material we read and learn in lecture. When I wrote my first memo, I thought I had done an absolutely wonderful job on my reflection. However, when I received my memo back, I noticed that I had lost points because I failed to focus on specific examples and thoroughly explain my thoughts. My professor pointed this out to me in his end commentary. Thankfully, I read and heeded his advice, and this helped me to earn full credit for my second memo. If I had decided to just toss the memo aside and disregard the end commentary, it would imply to my professor that I really do not care about attempting to improving, and I think showing improvement earns students extra brownie points, something that I realized especially in my General Chemistry class last year.

I also wanted to mention my thoughts on what I think distinguishes directive and facilitative commentary from positive and negative commentary. I think positive commentary is having an appropriate balance between directive and facilitative commentary whereas negative commentary is having just directive commentary or facilitative commentary. As I mentioned in class, I think a good balance between directive and facilitative commentary is important in helping the student see his/her weaknesses and strengths. Being simply harsh is a great way to shut down a writer, while sugar-coating his/her mistakes or failing to point out mistakes does not really give the writer an incentive to really attempt to work on improving. As far as what is an appropriate or good balance between directive and facilitative commentary, that is up for debate. So I guess my question is: What is an appropriate balance between directive and facilitative commentary?