I think it is a deep and helpful article. It gives us a straight forward format and points to pay attention when we are comment someone’s paper. I found this article useful and will try to use all the suggestions and tools author gave us. From previous article “Shitty First Draft” and from my papers to, I know how hard the writing is, and how much power and courage it takes from the writer. From this article, I understood the other side of the coin, how hard is to be the reader, and give comments to someone’s work without been perceived offensive, be neutral to someone’s work. It takes a lot of time not to be a critic or a teacher when you are reading someone work. This article will help me a lot in my future work when someone will ask me my personal opinion and suggestions about not only class work writing projects, but also any kind of paper (speech, business analyses, ect.)
I really enjoyed reading the essay of the kid; Richard Straub was very helpfully when he shows the technics on the specific example of someone’s work.
Usually I never give bad comments to someone’s work. If I am reading someone’s work and I feel like I disagree with someone or some ideas I just keep it for myself, and trying to find an ideas and words I like to give a positive feedback and not to offend the writer. After this article I will pay more attention to some aspects that I was disagree or not sure what author was trying to say, not to offend but to help with his work. Obviously it will be a long way with mistakes and corrections, but it is how it is works. We are learning to be not just the good writers, but the good readers as well.
I agree with the fact that many times when I am reviewing other people’s work, I feel bad in actually correcting things if I feel a mistake was made. I think it is important to actually make suggestions, but as long as you feel it is constructive criticism to the writer and will in fact only help them. If someone asks for help on reviewing work, we should assume they actually value our opinion and want to hear our voices, otherwise they probably would not have asked us to be editors or readers in the first place.
When you mention that you usually give praises, I can understand that feeling–especially if the writer is in front of you. After reading the writer’s hard work, it would irk my morality to bring them to reality when it’s a paper that needs a lot more work. However, I do see the necessity that if they want to improve and get a good grade, the fact that it’s a paper that needs a lot more work will have to be pointed out.