In her article, “Coaching from the Margins: Issues in Written Response,” Ilona Leki, Professor of English and director of ESL at the University of Tennessee, writes about three roles that writing teachers assume when they give feedback to students on their writing: reader, coach, and evaluator. She speaks of some of the challenges teachers face in integrating the three personalities. This prompted me to think of ways that might facilitate this integration. And because many students at our university are speakers of other languages, this article focuses on ways this integration could improve responses to their writing. The first step is to think about how the three roles interface.

As readers we are individuals who extract meaning from words on a page. In order to do that, we must be able to follow logic. As readers familiar with the requirements of US-based logic, we are also equipped to be coaches who guide international students in the structure and content of their writing. And as evaluators of their progress, we can give them concrete feedback on how they are doing and how to proceed.

When focusing on English for Academic Purposes, which has become a discipline in its own right, comprising basic requirements of academic processing and expression, our role as readers is strengthened by our own academic experiences. These can serve as resources that help us to break down tasks into learnable bites and can give us step-by-step platforms for evaluation.

For example, if students are working on research papers and having difficulty using and citing sources of information, we can design some short exercises on summarizing from reference material. We can evaluate their efforts as readers who are intent on seeing main ideas. It is possible that they have not had enough experience summarizing, and the practice will give them more confidence.

Boosting confidence in our students is an important part of responding to their writing. When giving feedback at any stage in the writing process, we can get the best results when we ask questions from the perspective of readers who are very interested with what they have to say and want to understand completely. These questions provide gentle coaching and as well as clear criteria for evaluation. When students are able to answer the questions and transfer this information to their writing in clear, logical ways, the writing task has been accomplished successfully.

In order to get creativity flowing on ways to integrate the roles of reader, coach, and evaluator, I designed the chart below for a faculty workshop on responding to the writing of speakers of other languages. I will be leading this workshop at our university on behalf of our Academic Support Center. Although Dr. Leki focuses on writing faculty in her article, I think many of the principles in the workshop would be useful for discipline faculty as well. The chart will be used in small group workshops as a reflection tool. Faculty will write down the answers to the questions, discuss them in the small group and then share insights with the large group.

Reader Coach Evaluator
What knowledge do I have that defines my role as a reader?

How does this knowledge allow me to locate and help students to overcome obstacles to successful completion of an assignment?
What learning would I expect students to transfer based on my feedback?

What are the requirements for being an empathetic reader?
How can I show that I have respect for the general tone of this work in order to create receptivity to my feedback?
How can I show the importance of making the revisions? (Beyond the grade.)

What characteristics need to be there in the writing in order for me to understand it?
What kinds of comments and questions can I give and ask that will help the student write so I can understand more easily?
In what ways (format, style, etc.) can I give feedback so students will understand it easily and be inspired to make the needed revisions?

The main idea is to reflect on the components of responding to students’ writing and find ways to support them when the usual conventions of English for Academic Purposes require more attention because they have not been part of previous educational experiences. We can find creative ways to integrate and balance our roles as reader, coach, and evaluator so that we can be of maximum use to the students.

Works Cited

Ilona Leki, “Coaching from the Margins: Issues in Written Response.” In Second Language Writing: Research Insights for the Classroom, ed. Barbara Kroll, pp. 57–68. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990).

Questions or comments? Contact the authors at talazrak@mum.edu.

More about the author

Printable Version