I found Bean Chapter 14 to be very helpful. Finding the most appropriate language to use when giving comments is tricky. When I've graded papers in the past, I would find myself crossing out notes I'd made on papers because I felt they were too negative, or written too hastily. I agree with Bean that using negative language will turn the students off, and keep them from applying themselves to the next paper. I think that, while sometimes when grading we can suspect that the student is being sarcastic or not taking the assignment seriously, we should not necessarily rush to such judgments, and, even if the student hasn't taken the assignment seriously, reacting negatively to it would only validate the student's stance--that the assignment wasn't worth his/her time to begin with, because the instructor is going to judge his/her paper harshly anyway.
Having said that, I do think there are times when fighting sarcasm with sarcasm can be appropriate to the situation, and used to voice the instructor's disappointment with the student's lack of interest. For example, I once taught a Theatre Appreciation class, and on one of the tests I had a short essay question: "Discuss ways in which Samuel Beckett's Happy Days is an absurdist work." I'd prepared the class for the question well in advance, making clear what I would expect them to be able to do on a test. One student, in response to this question, wrote something to the effect of "Happy Days is an absurdist work because the plot is absurd, the characters are absurd, the dialogue is absurd, the setting is absurd.." Obviously, the student had not paid attention to what I made clear in class, and had obviously not done the reading. And the sarcastic tone taken in his answer did, I will admit, anger me. I thought of the best response, and decided to just write "your answer is absurd" in the margin. I honestly don't think this response changed the way he approached the class. If anything, I'd called him on his disregard for the material, and he went on to take the next exam more seriously.
I think it depends on the situation, and on the student and how you think they will take the comment, and whether you feel that giving a sharper, perhaps negative, comment will give them the kick in the pants they need, or if it will just justify their apathetic approach to your class.
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I completely agree it does depend on the student and the situation. I know that we all want to save time, and as a result we may have the mentality that we can group our students together—but we can’t. Yes we’ll have 40 students and teaching two sections of the same material is bound to become so redundant that it’ll begin to take its toll on us, but we have to persevere and remember that each student has his/her own approach to the class which will be show in their writing.
That's possibly the best comment I've ever heard.
I agree it depends on the student- later in the semester, when one has an established relationship and "dialogue" with a student, one might get away with a little more.
This reminded me of an anecdote I just heard from a professor this semester. I'll leave out the name b/c I'm not sure how s/he would feel about me talking about it. There's actually a couple of good lessons in this story. The first is that s/he uses facebook to help memorize names quickly at the beginning of each semester (a nice trick, methinks) The second lesson comes from what happened when s/he looked up one of the new students in a class this semester and saw that the student had a link to a personal webpage posted on facebook.
The professor, giving into curiosity, clicked on the link and discovered that the student had a blog and that in this blog, the student discussed current classes and professors. The student referred to the professor in question as "a dork." The professor-- out of impishness, not offense--wrote a little quip on the student's returned homework to let the student know the comment had reached the prof's ears (or eyes, any way). The student *freaked* out--s/he was so concerned that the professor was offended or that it might affect grades, etc.
Actually, there are a few lessons in that second story:
1) The now well-told warning about using facebook is once again validated.
2) Don't post anything about any one that you wouldn't want them to see.
3) Sarcastic/nudging comments written on papers can be easily misinterpreted.
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