The most important thing in learning how to critique student writing is to recognize the difference between your objective and subjective reactions to it. Your objective reaction will be based on your knowledge and understanding of craft; your subjective reaction based on personal issues, interests, and beliefs. All too often, an adult’s evaluation of a young person’s work is purely subjective: it’s too dark, violent, sexually explicit, dark, cynical—whatever. “Can’t you be more positive?” they often say.
Effective criticism avoids making judgments about a piece of writing. Instead, it asks, “Does this piece of writing work?” It makes observations that help the writer see the difference between what he thinks the story is and what the words on the page actually say. It gives the writer ideas about how to make his work better. Rather than, “I like” or “I don’t like,” say “This works” or “This doesn’t work,” and explain why. Remember that young people learn best by example. Your matter-of-fact attitude about revision, your enthusiasm and curiosity about approaching the tasks of revision may be the most important thing you will teach young writers. Doing the writing exercises with the group and even sharing your own writing from time to time, will go a long way toward building a community of writers who trust and encourage one another.
If you are asked to look at a piece of writing that you admire, don’t go overboard with praise. To say that something is wonderful may be great for the writer’s ego and give him much-needed confidence as a writer, but it probably won’t make him grow. So be specific about why the piece works, then point out areas of weakness in the piece and give suggestions for improvement.
If you are asked to react to a piece of writing whose subject matter, style, or language is so worrisome or offensive to you that you can’t look at it objectively, you should feel free to decline. But, doing so, make sure the student understands that you’re not commenting on its craft. You may hate a piece of writing or disapprove of it, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t work! NOTE: some teachers mistake correcting for spelling, usage, and grammar for critique. Of course, these things will be important eventually, as the student works toward a finished piece. But they are not important in the early stages. Indeed, focusing on them too early may make a piece go cold.
If you are going to do peer critique in your classroom, you will need to set parameters
right from the start. First and foremost, group members must feel safe. Though criticism may be painful to hear, the writer receiving it should feel that it is given in the spirit of generosity by peers who take him seriously as a writer. Competition should be discouraged among group members; mean-spirited behavior simply cannot be tolerated. Peer critics should work toward being both honest and kind in their responses, with the idea that their job is to help the writer define the nature of the gap between what he imagines and what is on the page. It is the teacher’s job to set the tone, to deal with writers whose attitude toward the work of others is hurtful or ineffective.
Group members should avoid making either positive or negative evaluations about the piece of writing under consideration. Instead, using specific guidelines (see appendix), they should say what they think works and why, then point out parts they don’t understand and places that need improvement. The writer receiving the criticism should listen and take notes, without any verbal response to what he is hearing. At the end of the critique, he should be given the opportunity to clarify any confusion he has about what was said through discussion with group members.
Grading is, of course, a separate issue. Once, visiting a private high school that takes great pride in its academic standards, I overheard a conversation between an English teacher and a student about the way the teacher had graded a creative writing assignment. Though the girl had received an “A” on the assignment, she felt the teacher had graded too easily—almost everyone in the class received an “A.” The teacher answered, “It isn’t fair to give bad grades to good students who just aren’t creative.” It was all I could do not to say, “But it’s okay to give bad grades to creative students who just can’t memorize the rules of grammar?” Or, “It’s okay to give bad grades to a math whiz who doesn’t understand how to think about literature? Clearly, the teacher did not understand the nature of the creative process. She did not know that creative thinking skills can be taught, that creative writing assignments must be as carefully constructed other writing assignments so that students’ work can be evaluated fairly.
Unfortunately, this is a fairly common attitude among English teachers. At the end of a week-long intensive creative writing course for educators, a teacher from that same private school observed, “Because our teachers have resorted to generous grades for the creative assignments they have given, the grade boost seems like grade-elevating, and thus confuses the students’ progress overall. They function like bonus points instead of a genuine critical evaluation of creative writing skills. We are so focused on academics that I don’t have time to do much creative writing. Then when I do give them something creative to do, it’s always so…disappointing. Before this week, I didn’t know you had teach students how to be creative—that you could teach that.”
You can teach students to be creative. Just as the student who has difficulty memorizing the rules of grammar can learn techniques to make memorizing easier, the student who has difficulty being creative can be taught ways to open his mind to this kind of work. First, you must let go of the idea that creativity is an inborn trait, but a long, complex, ambiguous process that demands a wide range of skills; second, you must make the creative process a part of your own life so that you will recognize the various phases as your students experience them in their own work. When you’ve done this, you’ll see better how to construct assignments that test and strengthen certain aspects of the process.
Of course, there is always a subjective element to the evaluation of creative work—though this is much less a problem in the work of beginning writers than it is with students who have found their voices and begun to do their own true work. In any case, it is important to make sure that students know exactly what is expected of them and how you will evaluate them. On the first day of class it is good to give them a handout that sets forth the goals and objectives of the class as well as your grading system. At the beginning of each unit, they should receive a handout that describes the assigned work, gives a point value to each assignment, and sets forth the criteria by which each assignment will be evaluated. Handouts for each major writing assignment are also a good idea. Students may or may not actually read the handouts. In fact, they are notorious for ignoring such things. But having set things down in specific terms, on paper, will make things considerably easier if questions about grades arise.
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