How best to respond to student writing is part of the broader question of how to create a context in which people learn to write better or more easily. To that end, teachers have tinkered with all aspects of the context: the number of assignments, the types of assignments, the nature of the relationship between teacher and student, and so on. This chapter addresses issues surrounding another aspect of the writing context, types of written responses to student writing. Although students often write responses to papers by their peers, the focus of this chapter is limited to responses written by teachers.

Murray (1968) tells the story of an advertising executive who received written reports from his staff. Since he sometimes felt that the reports were not well written, he developed a response strategy to improve his employees' writing. He took written reports home, and the next day returned the reports to their authors in his private office saying, “Is this the best you can do?” The authors sheepishly took the reports back, worked on them, and resubmitted them. The boss once again took them and the next day again asked, “Is this really the best you can do?” This continued until the authors finally said, “Yes, it is the best we can do!” And the boss answered, “Good, then I'll read it.”