By Peter Elbow - Sharing and Responding (3rd Edition) (1999-10-16) [Paperback]

by Peter Elbow

To help foster a productive environment for group work, Elbow and Belanoff offer students advice on talking with one another about their writing in an 80-page SHARING AND RESPONDING GUIDE. The activities in this guide move from nonjudgmental kinds of responding to full criticism to help build students' confidence and trust. The guide contains two sample papers, which are used to illustrate different kinds of feedback. It concludes with a summary of ways of responding and suggestions on how and when they're most useful.

Genres: Teaching, Nonfiction, Writing

Paperback

First published May 1, 1994

About the author

Peter Henry Elbow was an American academic who was a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he also directed the Writing Program from 1996 until 2000.
As a scholar whose published work raised both academic and popular awareness of scholarship within the field of Rhetoric and Composition, Elbow’s research includes theory, practice, and pedagogy. He is one of the pioneers of freewriting.

Reviews

[Kerry & naomi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sharing and Responding is actually a pamphlet extract from a larger textbook, A Community of Writers. The writers, Peter Elbow and Pat Belanoff, wanted to make their methods for conducting peer reviews in composition classes available to teachers who did not necessarily utilize their textbook.

Sharing and Responding gives writing teachers a guide for teaching students how to constructively critique each other’s work. The booklet also gives students a guide for what methods they might want to employ when asking for criticism of a draft.

Elements of style

This is an accessible, user-friendly book aimed at college students, but high school students would easily understand the examples and vocabulary used. The book thoroughly explains each technique and gives definitions of unfamiliar terms while also indicating which methods might work better for earlier drafts, which for later drafts, and how the student can choose which method of feedback she would like based on the type of composition as well.

Practical Matters

The first part of the book discusses the different kinds of responses and methods for giving criticism in summarized format. The latter half, and bulk of the book, gives specific examples of each kind of response and procedure using two different essays. The book also includes journal entries from students and the editors themselves detailing their frustrations with revision and accepting or giving criticism to demonstrate that everyone from the most novice to the most experienced writer can have problems with giving and receiving criticism.

Sections:
Cover Letter
Summary of Kinds of Responses
Procedures for Giving and Receiving Responses
Full Explanations of Kinds of Responses
1. Sharing: Nor Responses or Responses from the Self
2. Pointing and Center of Gravity
3. Summary and Sayback
4. What is Almost Said? What Do You Want to Hear More About?
5. Reply
6. Voice
7. Movies of the Reader’s Mind
8. Metaphorical Descriptions
9. Believing and Doubting
10. Skeleton Feedback and Descriptive Outline
11. Criterion-Based Feedback
Sample Essays

Overall

The booklet is not long, 60 pages of fast reading. Sharing and Responding is, however, packed with tons of useful information, especially for someone like me who at the time had never taught a writing class but will then did for a cumulative 7 years. I used this book in a project for a graduate composition theory class in which I designed my own teaching style for the first year composition classroom. I was especially interested in using collaborative learning, which meant a lot of class discussion and peer reviews of assignments. For the kind of teaching of writing I intended to do and then did, this book proved invaluable.

[Claudia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such a tiny little book, yet it's full of useful information. I read everything through my National Board lenses, and I can see lots of connections when talking to NB candidates...the summary and say-back are exactly the strategies we should be using when we read for candidates. We should be reading early drafts and responding, not evaluating or editing.

I collected 7 stickies of notes that I'll now type up into a handout to use for candidates and for candidate support providers. This puts so much into perspective. I'll definitely read it again and again.

[April · Rating 4 out of 5]

Definitely a good guide to responding to writing. I believe I got this for a class at University and just re-read it because I'm taking a creative writing class and we're going to be having workshop sessions. I'm sure the teacher will give us tips on how to evaluate and respond to other students' work, but I wanted to read this on my own to get a head start and see which methods I prefer to use and request.