I like the way Richard Straub set up his article “The Concept of Control in Teacher Response: Defining the Varieties of ‘Directive’ and ‘Facilitative’ Commentary.” What stood out in this article, were the different examples he provided. To be honest, I liked the “directive response” example (Straub 227). In my senior seminar class with Dr. Nira Gupta-Casale, I learned you can help a student but that student still has to interpret what you are saying. In addition, the student still has to go home and figure out ways to apply everything and sometimes that can be challenging. Continuing, I like how Peter Elbow says, “I’d be happy to talk more about this in a conference” (Straub 243). The comment lets students know he is willing to clear any confusion and elaborate. I prefer conferencing myself so I love when teachers are open and welcoming to students seeing them during office hours. I also thought Anne Gere’s and Jane Peterson’s comments were effective as well.

Continuing, this article once again reminded me of my writing center theory and practice class because the article uses terms presented in that class and it makes statements that I think a lot of people in the writing center would agree with. I like the stance “we should not reject all directive styles of response any more than we should all adopt some standard facilitative style” (Straub 246). With Straub’s article, learning was easier because it tied into things discussed in my other class. Moreover, I liked reading Straub’s article a little more than I liked reading “Looking Back as We Look Forward: Historicizing Writing Assessment” by Kathleen Blake Yancey. I do feel like I learned in Yancey’s article, and I liked the questions proposed.