Sommers, Nancy. “Responding to Student Writing.” College Composition and Communication, Vol. 33, No. 2, May 1982, pp. 148-156. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/357622.

In the article, “Responding to Student Writing,” Nancy Sommers observes that “although commenting on student writing is the most widely used method for responding to student writing, it is the least understood” (148). Sommers supports her observation through a study of 35 teachers at NYU and UO and their comments on the first and second drafts of the same three student essays. Her purpose is to call attention to the ways that teachers’ comments on students’ writing can be vague and aimless in order to show the ways that commentary can be improved to help students develop their writing. She directs her article at teachers. As a student and a possible future teacher, I found Sommers’s evidence compelling, especially the comments examples that she integrated into her article. It really showed how the comments can be totally arbitrary.