t being the one to take the initiative to come up with an alternate assignment, the teacher should suggest two or three essay topics that students may choose from. In this way, the teacher is providing a range of questions that ask the student to use the technique the teacher is reinforcing. Then, both teacher and student are satisfied and none of the students suspect that any other is being given special privileges.Elbow also suggests bringing in outside readers as a new audience for the students. Every once in a while, this would be a very beneficial event, however, it would take a large amount of planning to execute. All of the work that would be put into the organization of such an event seems needless when there is a perfect audience already assembled- classmates. Not only will peers help correct grammatical and structural errors, but by reading others papers, students are learning about other styles of writing and adding these different voices to their own repertoire.There are many problems in the relationship between students and teachers that can be solved simply by introducing classmates as the audience. Obviously, the conflict teachers have within themselves while deciding whether their true reactions are too harsh to relay to their students. Elbow suggests submitting an evaluation-type form along with the essay, so that both the teacher and the student understand what is expected as far as comments and feedback go. However, even if only half of a teachers students submitted such a form, the workload created would be enormous. The simple and more effective solution is to provide each student with a general evaluation sheet and have each student trade with another classmate so that everyone receives feedback from a real person- not just a general reader.Receiving feedback such as this aids a student in improving much more than the style in which he presents his material. Elbow states in his article, But if your teacher only tel...
