Response to Dietrich & Sommers

I think that Dietrich's piece shows that already in the 70s there were advocates to apply conferencing with students. While reading I found that I do not agree with the following paragraph: “The first benefit of this requirement [explanatory paragraph] is that it forces students to have a rhetorical strategy. Initially, I suspect, some students write their essays and then think of a strategy to fit”. (p. 195). First, I think that everybody has a rhetorical strategy in any kind of writing. In my opinion, the mere action of writing is already a rhetorical strategy. Now, if with “rhetorical strategy” she refers to a text that fits in traditional rhetoric characteristics, well, that’s a different story. In addition, I do not think that strategies are previous to the text or ex post facto. Process theory demonstrates that we elaborate our rhetorical strategies during the whole composing process, not only at the beginning and end of it. On the other hand, I liked the following quote: “It would be sadly ironic if a writing class led students to confine their writing to what is safe rather than give them a wider range of options” (p. 196). But again, I think this depends on how the teacher teaches the class and how writing tasks are proposed to the students. And sometimes even the best teachers’ intentions don’t guarantee that students will explore “a wide range of options” instead of just fulfilling assignments.
Regarding Sommers’ text: I loved how explicit he is, giving details such as “the memo questions can usually be placed on the same sheet as the essay assignment, making it easy for students to see the connections between the two writing tasks” (p. 176). I agree with the function he assigns to memos: guide teachers in what kind of feedback offer students and being a real reader and helping students to reflect on their composing processes. He proposes, similarly to Brannon and Knoblach, that teachers should give the benefit of the doubt to students. However, Sommers states that teachers should not try to be completely ignorant of audience and purpose since they need to play the role of editor or collaborator. I also liked the fact that Sommers proposes to change the questions in every writing memo students have to answer and he explains that this is because the memo has to be linked with the writing task. I enjoyed reading this text. I would love to apply this in the second language classroom to learn more about the composing process of my students.