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Experiential Writing Project

Give productive feedback

June 17, 2021 02:44 PM

Abstract

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Giving feedback that prompts solid revisions is a skill, so experiential writing teachers should give positive, specific, respectful, contextualized feedback. They should empathize with their students’ perspectives and cultures, gaining a reliable sense of what their students are trying to say through their writing. They also should give individual feedback in writing or in an interview. 

Theoretical Background

Jody Underwood and Alyson Tregidgo (2006) surveyed studies of feedback on student writing. For feedback to result in good revision, students must notice the feedback, accept it, and understand what to do with it. The effectiveness of feedback has to do with timing, so teachers need to sense when they should comment on content and when on surface details, when to give authoritative or directive feedback and when to give more user-friendly or facilitative advice, when to give positive and when negative feedback, when to give specific and when general advice, and when to give a lot of feedback and when to give a little. (See details of their findings below.)

Brian Jackson suggests that a strong writing teacher has the following characteristics: possesses a deep concern for students, adopts the perspective that students already come with cultural funds (a storehouse of knowledge and experience that can benefit them as they learn to write), takes time to gain a base of knowledge about the students’ cultures and experiences, considers a plurality of cultures in their class members, expects students to reflect on their own practice (metacognition), and believes in rhetorical practice--that writing is situated.

Basics of Feedback

Principles 

At the end of their survey of studies of effective feedback on writing, Underwood and Tregidgo (2006) recommend the following:

  • When providing detailed feedback, do not include an overall grade. Students perceive that grades are for ranking students, so when a grade is given, they ignore even good feedback about the strengths and weaknesses of their writing. 
  • Provide both content-level and surface-level feedback. In early drafts students will pay attention to comments about organization and development, but not about surface details. Later they will accept and use comments on surface elements, such as  grammar, word choice, formatting, and typos. 
  • Align directive and facilitative feedback with student goals. Directive comments tell students what to do, but not why. Sometimes directive comments result in good revision, but generally students will listen better to advice that shows them how to improve their paper. Effective feedback comes, not from trying to help students achieve a universally  ideal paper, but from trying to help students achieve the best version of their own paper.
  • Balance control of the feedback. Students don’t respond well to demanding feedback, but they accept feedback that clearly leaves them in control of their own work. 
  • Present feedback in specific rather than general ways. Specific feedback is the primary mode, but sometimes a teacher can point to a rule that may help the students improve sentences or correct mistakes globally. 
  • Generate text appropriate to the ability level of the student. Beginning writing students won’t comprehend complex feedback. 
  • Tell students both what they did right and where they need help. The studies found that both positive or constructive feedback and specific negative feedback worked. 
  • Generate an appropriate amount of text based on student certitude. Students absorb less feedback when they know they’re doing a good job on their paper or in an area of their paper, and they absorb more feedback when they know they need to improve. 
  • Conduct a survey to find out what types of feedback the students want and need.  Because they absorb varying amounts of feedback, student surveys on what they think they’re doing well and what they think they’re doing poorly can help teachers make decisions about general instruction and individual feedback. This works especially well when the comments connect to goals the students have made for improving their writing.
  • Provide alternative feedback methods for specific characteristics of writing. Primarily this has to do with providing published models that showcase good organization, development, paragraph cohesiveness, and other skills students need to gain.

In general, reexamine your assumptions about your students. Until you understand and respect them you will continuously slip into picky, surface, negative feedback that makes students feel like they are bad writers. In What the Best College Teachers Do, Ken Bain (2004) describes how excellent teachers think of their students: “They were fellow students—no, fellow human beings—struggling with the mysteries of the universe, human society, historical development, or whatever. They found affinity with their students in their own ignorance and curiosity, in their love of life and beauty, in their mixture of respect and fear, and in that mix they discovered more similarities than differences between themselves and the people who populated their classes. A sense of awe at the world and the human condition stood at the center of their relationships with those students” (144).

Good writing teachers have reflected on what made them good writers. They give their students experiences that will do the same for their students. They think of students as writers in the process of becoming better. In other words, they recognize where the students are developmentally and don’t blame them for not being more advanced.

Good writing pedagogy is experiential pedagogy. Notice that there is not an area on this website that focuses on how to lecture students about improving their writing. That omission is intentional. Good writing teachers spend a minimum amount of time describing principles in the abstract and much more time on giving individual attention to students, providing principles when they will be accepted and understood.

Teachers can give both written and verbal feedback, so the two reinforce each other. Conversation is good for giving a feeling of connection with the piece, for offering praise and encouragement, and for articulating future steps. But students also value a written record that details what to do next.

Good writing teachers don’t grade or even read every writing assignment. Some assignments (see “Journals” in this website) are for developing fluency and the ability to reflect. Teachers should spend their valuable time giving individualized feedback on the pieces they choose to have students draft and redraft. Peers can also give good feedback, especially when trained concerning some principles of helping others.

How to

  • After reviewing your program goals, determine which writing assignments will be checked off without careful feedback and which you will have the students take  through several drafts.
  • Find time to talk to the student about their goals for writing and about the project you’ll give feedback on. Help them decide on a subject that you approve of. 
  • Use a peer review of one draft, so you won’t have to give careful feedback on that draft. 
  • When giving feedback on a piece of writing, generally read it quickly once and then mark it during a second reading:
    • On the first read, determine the purpose, audience, structure, voice of the piece. You may discover that the student is piling up data that has no argument, writing to you rather than to a professional audience, structuring their ideas poorly, or using an incompatible tone. By knowing these basic attributes of the piece of writing you know how to help the students achieve their goals
    • Go through again and mark some items. If the piece needs substantive improvement, don’t waste time marking grammar or mechanics. 
    • Determine whether a student needs retooling on some specific items such as the basic research question, literature review, or some other part or attribute of the paper. You can ask the student to do some exercises that will help with specific elements before they proceed. 
  • Some educators must grade writing because their institution requires it. You can help separate that process from the process of improving the writing by giving points for the stages (generally full points) and let students know that you will be grading the final draft. When points for the assigned paper are spread throughout the process, that emphasizes both process and product.

Teaching Materials and Resources

Quick Links

References

Bain, K. (2004). What the best college teachers do. Harvard University Press.

Underwood, J. and Tregidgo, A. (2006). Improving student writing through effective

Feedback: Best practices and recommendations. Journal of Teaching Writing, 22(2), 73-95.

Further Reading

Wiggins, G. (2012). Seven keys to effective feedback. Educational Leadership, 70(1), 10-16.
http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/sept12/vol70/num01/Seven-Keys-to-Effective-Feedback.aspx

Plaindaren, C., Shah, P. M., & Talib A. R. (2019). A study on the effectiveness of written feedback in writing tasks among upper secondary school pupils. Creative Education, 10(13), 3491-3508. DOI: 10.4236/ce.2019.1013269