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Kayla Greaves

Lucia Elden

English 111

7 December 2017

Learning from Student Writing

Most of the time when teachers give their classes examples of other student writing,

they use good examples. They say, read this paper, its the best one Ive seen so far. What is

that teaching us? When this happens students try to make their papers look and sound exactly

how the well written one does. Students typically wont point out flaws because the teacher

thinks it was written so well that there isnt going to be anything wrong with it, right?

Technically no, but thats what students are going to think because the teacher says it is a good

paper. Just because a teacher says the paper is good does not meant it is lacking flaws; There is

going to be some. In a class full of college students that probably do not know everything about

academic writing, there is never going to be a perfect paper. Even authors that publish books

never have a perfect one; they get tons of feedback on how to better their writing. There may

be one or two papers that the teacher deems as good, but its not going to be flawless. Most

students are going to find the easy way out and use the good paper as a template to write
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theirs. They probably arent going to pick through it and find things that could better the other

students paper. There is so much a student can learn from reading student writing.

Students can learn how to phrase things by seeing other students doing it wrong. They

can learn how to punctuate by seeing other students put periods or commas in the wrong

places or the overuse of them. Jack Mezirow, former professor at Columbia University agrees in

his article Transformative Learning: Theory to Practice, by saying The educators

responsibility is to help learners reach their objectives in such a way that they will function as

more autonomous, socially responsible learners (90). By having students read other student

writing and finding things on their own the educator is making them strive to be an

autonomous learner. To be an autonomous learner is to develop new ideas and solve problems

with a students own thinking and not have much external guidance. Having students read

other student writing is a perfect way for educators to have their students learning on their

own. This will help students learn to be independent academic writers and teach them to learn

from student writing in the classroom.

Not only does learning from student writing help in the classroom, it helps in discourse

communities and work as well. It gives students the ability to see an error and teach themselves

from that. How can students learn from choices made by others at work? They watch them and

see what they are doing wrong or what they could be doing better. By doing so, students know

what not to do. For me working at a hospital, I learn new things almost every day by watching

co-workers do something wrong or by making mistakes, and Im sure someone has learned

from my mistakes at work as well. I learn how not to talk to a patient by watching my co-

workers talk to them in non-professional ways. I learn how to properly use the computer
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system by seeing others make mistakes. Perri Klass, professor at New York university and

former medical director for Reach out and Read, would strongly agree in her article Learning

the Language that there is so much to learn from watching others weak choices by explaining

If I learned nothing else during my first three months of working the hospital as a medical

student, I learned endless jargon and abbreviations (62). Jargon describes special words that

are used in particular professions and are difficult for others to understand. If a student is just

starting out in the medical field and heard jargon or an abbreviation from a co-worker that is

wrong or the abbreviation is similar to another and the person gets the mixed up, that student

has learned the right way to use the jargon or abbreviation as Klass did.

Learning from others in a discourse community is very important because when

someone is in a discourse most people probably dont know much about it unless they are part

of the discourse also. If someone is just joining a discourse it is important that they learn from

the other members, not only the errors, but the things they do well because that is the only

way someone is going to understand the discourse. Barry Alford, who has taught English for 20

years believes that students students should be part of a discourse that allows them to open

up and talk in class rather than being told what to do with teacher talk. He emphasizes in his

article Freirean Voices, Student Choices,

So we need to support a broader sense of literacy, one that engages students in a

community of speakers and listeners going about the messy business of thinking

through a problem rather than a community in which the problem is always already

solved by some compartmentalized application (279).

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By stating this Alford is suggesting that teachers should allow students to go through the

process of problematizing rather than them just being told the solution by the teacher. By

allowing this to happen in the classroom, Alford is teaching his students to become

autonomous thinkers much like Mezirow does when he states, but his or her goal is to

become a socially responsible autonomous thinker (90). They both preach the worth of

autonomous thinking. By feeling so strongly about autonomous thinking they are teaching

students to learn from student writing.

There is disagreement that by teaching students to challenge themselves, reading well

written papers is better for the classroom. One author who would agree that it is better to

learn from well written papers is Adrienne Rich. Rich is one of the most read and respected

poets of the 20th century. In one of her speeches Claiming and Education she speaks strongly

about going to school to claim and education, rather than receiving one and challenging

oneself; not taking the easy way out. Rich explains This is the experience of taking

responsibility toward yourself (96). By saying this she would disagree that reading student

writing is better than reading well written papers because by reading the well written ones that

students think has no flaws the student is taking responsibility of themselves by challenging

each other to find the flaws and mistakes in the papers and learn from that. Mike Rose, an

American educator scholar who studied literacy and the struggles of the working-class America

would argue that learning from student papers is better for students because he strongly

believes that making errors is okay. He emphasized in his article Politics of Remediation

Error marks the place where education begins (38). Thus meaning that making errors in

papers, which would be considered a weak paper is where students begin to educate
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themselves. They are beginning to educate themselves by reading student writing and learning

from the paper.

Teachers should allow for students to read their peers papers, whether they are well

written or weak. Paulo Freire, a Brazilian educator and philosopher speaks a lot about learning

from other students and teacher-student communication in his book Pedagogy of the Opressed.

He states, The teacher cannot think for his students nor can he impose his thoughts on them

(77). By this he means students need to teach themselves. They cannot rely on the teacher to

tell them what to do. Students dont have the same thinking that their teacher has when

reading papers. They need to read student writing and learn from it on their own. In my English

111 class we read our peers papers both online and we passed around a hard copy to receive

feedback from other students. The first copy of a students paper is going to be weak so that is

a perfect learning experience for students. There was a discussion about whether we like it

better face to face or giving feedback online. All but one student said that they liked it better

giving feedback face to face. Mike Rose would suggest, They need to practice writing academic

essays; they need opportunities to talk about their writing-and their reading; they need people

who could quickly determine what necessary background knowledge they lacked and supply it

in comprehensible ways (37). By stating this Rose believes that students should give feedback

to each other and have the opportunity to talk about their thinking directly to the other

student. That gives them a chance to explain their thinking and learn from that persons paper

and know that they shouldnt do that in their own. It also gives them a chance to get ideas on

how to fix it. Barry Alford, would agree with Freire by stating in his article, Freirean Voices,

Student Choices, The most concrete way I know of making this more is to engage my
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students, and have them engage each other in the formation of topics and strategies in the

classroom (280). Alford strongly suggests that there be classroom discussion and students

learn from one anothers choices. The students are going to learn from other students choices

in their writing by reading the papers and learning how to better theirs or the other students.

Teachers should allow for errors to be made in the class room. Where ever there is an

error there is a learning experience. Teachers should allow students to read from student

writing rather than well written papers to not only better the students writing, but to help them

be able to give feedback and suggestions on how they might go about making it better.

Students should want to learn to find the flaws in student papers rather than looking at a well

written one and trying to make theirs sound just like the good one. There is much to be learned

from student writing and this will help students better their papers.
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Works cited

Alford, Barry. Freirean Voices, Student Choices. Exploring Relationships: Globalization

and Learning in the 21st Century. Pearson Learning Solutions, 2013, pp. 279-282

Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. 30th anniversary Ed. New York: Continuum, 2000

Mezirow, Jack. Writing for Teachers

Perri Klass. Learning the Language, from a not entirely benign procedure by Perri Klass

Penguin Group

Rose, Mike. The Politics of Remediation. Conversations In Context: Identity,

Knowledge, and College Writing. Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace College

Publishers, 1998: 32-48. Print.

Rich, Adrienne. Claiming an Education. Exploring Connections: Learning in the 21st Century.

Education Inc. 2016