“How Do You Like It So Far?”
Responding to Young Writers
Deborah Appleman
Professor and Director of the
Summer Writing Program
Carleton College
THE GARY SHANDLING SHOW
This is the theme to Gary's Show,
The theme to Gary's show.
Gary called me up and asked if I would write his theme song
I’m almost halfway finished,
How do you like it so far?
How do you like the theme to Gary's Show?
This is the theme to Gary's Show,
The opening theme to Gary's show.
This is the music that you hear as you watch the credits.
We're almost to the part of where I start to whistle.
Then we'll watch "It's Gary Shandling's Show".
This was the theme to Garry Shandling's show.
Revision from a
Second-Grade Perspective
• “Okay, boys and girls, when you start fixing up
your sloppy copy to make it a good copy, what
kinds of changes could you make?”
• “I’m going to try to not have as many periods.”
• “Why would you want to do that?”
• “Because then I don’t have to do so many
capitals.”
“The Pie” by Gary Soto
A Community of Writers,
Readers, Respondents
The promise of community and equality
is at the center of our most prized national
document, yet we’re shaped by harsh
forces to see difference and to base
judgment on it.
Mike Rose, Lives on the Boundary
A Tale Of Two Texts
What are we looking for
in student writing?
The Redwoods/Fox
Responding Toward Revision:
What Do We Want?
I SEE
REDWOODS
FOX
I WISH
Embracing Contraries
Our loyalty to students asks us to be their allies and hosts as we instruct
and share: to invite all students to enter in and join us as members of a
learning community—even if they have difficulty. Our commitment to
students asks us to assume they are all capable of learning, to see things
through their eyes, to help bring out their best rather than their worst
when it comes to tests and grades. By taking this inviting stance we will
help more of them learn.
But our commitment to knowledge and society asks us to be guardians or
bouncers: we must discriminate, evaluate, test, grade, certify. We are
invited to stay true to the inherent standards of what we teach, whether or
not that stance fits the particular students before us.
Peter Elbow
More Examples of
Student Writing
• Lunch Table
• Ramon’s Revision
. . . I thought a teacher had to talk. I feel guilty
when I do nothing but listen. I confess my fear that
I am too easy, that I have too low standards, to a
colleague, Don Graves. He reassumes me I am a
demanding teacher, for I see more in my students
than they see in themselves. I certainly do. I
expect them to write writing worth reading and they
do—to their surprise, not mine.
From Donald Murray, “The Listening Eye:
Reflections on the Writing Conference”
The Summer Writing Program
I hear voices from my students that they have never
heard from themselves. I find they are authorities on
subjects they think ordinary. I find that even my
remedial students write like writers, putting down
writing that doesn't quite make sense, reading it to
see what sense there might be in it, trying to make
sense of it, and—draft after draft—making sense of
it. They follow language to see where it will lead
them, and I follow them following language.
From Donald Murray, “The Listening Eye:
Reflections on the Writing Conference”
Lees’ Taxonomy of
Formative Response
•Correct
•Emote
•Describe
•Suggest
•Question
•Remind
•Assign
For social-epistemic rhetoric, the real is located in
a relationship that involves the dialectical
interaction of the observer, the discourse
community (social group) in which the observer is
functioning, and the material conditions of
existence. Knowledge is never found in any one of
these but can only be posited as a product of the
dialectic in which all three come together.
From James Berlin, “Rhetoric and Ideology in the Writing Class”
 How do you like it so far?
 How do you like it so far? What do you like best?
 Where do you want to go with this?
 How do you think you can get from here to
there?
 What did you mean to say here?
 Can you describe this so I can picture it?
 How does this sound?
 What is the purpose?
 What will you do next?
Deborah Appleman
Carleton College
Northfield MN 55057
507-646-4010
dapplema@carleton.edu
http://www.acad.carleton.edu/curricular/
educ/faculty/Appleman/index.html