The workshops in this course ask you to compose responses to the drafts your group members write. It's important to take the writing of these responses seriously, because they are important in many wa

The workshops in this course ask you to compose responses to the drafts your group members write. It's important to take the writing of these responses seriously, because they are important in many ways. Not only can they offer useful constructive criticism for the draft author, but they're excellent practice for refining your own knowledge of craft. In other words, writing responses for others, and thinking about the feedback you're offering, can help you write your own creative work more effectively. In addition to all of that, workshop responses help establish trust and a sense of community in a workshop group. 

In spite of their value and importance, students often approach writing workshop responses without as much care and attention as they could. The Workshop Responses exercise should help you understand more clearly what a useful, effective workshop response looks like.

WHAT TO DO

FIRST, read the "Workshop Response Samples" linked at the bottom of this page. This document contains several examples of workshop responses that students have written in the past. Evaluate them based on how useful they would be to the authors of the workshop drafts.

Note: These responses are NOT written according to the guidelines and requirements of our workshops in this class, so don't evaluate them based on that. The goal here is simply to understand what useful, effective feedback looks like in a general sense.

SECOND, post a response to the following items on the Workshop Responses forum at the bottom of this page: 

1. Which responses do you feel are the two best responses, and why?
2. Which responses do you feel are the two least effective responses, and why?

GRADING

This post is worth 5 points of your Discussion Forum points. See the Discussion Participation Guide for details on grading criteria. 

Workshop Response Samples.docx