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Strategies For Commenting In The Margins Of Student Papers
- Rank criteria and concentrate comments on the most important features.
- Refer comments to specific criteria in your assignment.
- Ask questions to elicit more thinking about a point.
- Frame questions and comments from "a reader's" point of view. Especially if you've assigned the paper to be written to a specific audience, read and comment from that point of view.
- Be specific. Rather than just noting "nice," explain (even briefly) what works well in an effective passage: "nice examples," "good use of source material," and so on.
- Where a student handles a skill well, circle it and draw an arrow to where the student could do the same in a weaker part of the paper.
- Focus your energies. If, for example, development is a problem throughout the paper, pick one paragraph and explain how it could be more fully developed. Then simply note that the advice can apply to the rest of the paper.
- Play Devil's Advocate to help students tease out their thinking in a murky passage.
- Pay some attention to detail: has the writer filled in enough detail appropriate to your discipline to explain, argue, or describe adequately?
- Consider visual features: would headings help chunk the text? Might a visual display of data be more effective? Would a different visual display of data be more effective?
- Consider how and where source material can contribute more to the paper.
- Always refer to your particular criteria for an assignment!
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