FEEDBACK FOR INSTRUCTORS
Feedback is absolutely essential for writers, no matter their level of expertise. It can come in many forms, from untrained peers, trained peers, outside experts, instructors, or audience. It can be backward-looking—SUMMATIVE—evaluating the elements of a finished text, or it can be forward-looking—FORMATIVE—providing guidance for improvement of a draft text.
Big Picture or Details?
For instructors who wish to figure out how to go about it, there are several ways to think about feedback, including approaches aimed at higher-order concerns or lower-order concerns.
Higher-order concerns are about the big picture—the quality and expression of the ideas. These concerns include effective organization, clarity of argument, and strength and appropriateness of evidence. Often, students who have been neck-deep in research write first drafts that proceed from A to C to E and back to B, skipping over important points of connection between concepts or presenting them in a way that confuses readers. Good feedback will point this out and support writers as they fill in the gaps.
Lower-order concerns are about the details of expression; they include syntax, grammar, spelling, and punctuation. Feedback for patterns of these mechanical concerns can be formulated as lessons in the principles. Using errors, or–even better–correct uses, found in the paper can be an effective way to teach them.
Students may not understand the difference between higher- and lower-order concerns, so instructors can consider staying generally to one or the other. If a paragraph needs to be completely rethought and/or rewritten, for example, there is no point in calling out lower-order issues. It sends a signal that a sentence is otherwise finished, and it may not be.
Corrective vs. Directive
Corrective feedback marks up errors; directive feedback teaches how to recognize and correct errors or issues. For lower-order concerns, it is often more valuable to provide directive feedback that shows how—and why—to correct errors. Instructors who are not grammarians can take advantage of a useful resource by directing students to University Writing Center handouts.
Students are often baffled by what to do with directive higher-order feedback. They may see that a paragraph is poorly organized or contains too many unsupported ideas, but they may not know how to address the problem. Providing an example, particularly of a well-organized paragraph in the same paper, is one way to make the path forward visible.
Feedback Sandwich
Negative feedback, even for minor issues, can be devastating to some students, so surrounding the meat of the criticism with some positive bread, delivered before and after, can take the sting out of it. This technique makes it easier for students to be receptive, and it makes the interaction end on an upbeat note. Feedback communicated using this method should be delivered with clarity so that the positive comments don’t dilute the message of what needs more work. That said, a feedback sandwich can seem super-fakey-nice, so genuine criticism delivered with kindness might be more effective.
Liking as Feedback
Peter Elbow characterizes feedback as ranking (assigning a grade), evaluating (pointing out strengths and weaknesses), or liking. “Liking” flips our usual conception of how writers learn to write better; he points out that it’s demoralizing to revise something we have written that someone else, or we, don’t like. He says:
What really happens when people learn to write better is more like this: We write something. We read it over and we say, "This is terrible.... But I like it. Damn it, I'm going to get it good enough so that others will like it too." And this time we don't just put it in a drawer, we actually work hard on it. And we try it out on other people too—not just to get feedback and advice but, perhaps more important, to find someone else who will like it.
Notice the two stories here—two hypotheses. (a) 'First you improve the faults and then you like it.' (b) 'First you like it and then you improve faults.'
…
When I apply this story to our situation as teachers I come up with this interesting hypothesis: good writing teachers like student writing (and like students). I think I see this borne out—and it is really nothing but common sense. Teachers who hate student writing and hate students are grouchy all the time. How could we stand our work and do a decent job if we hated their writing? Good teachers see what is only potentially good, they get a kick out of mere possibility—and they encourage it. When I manage to do this, I teach well." (199-200)
Sources
Elbow, Peter. (1993). Ranking, evaluating, and liking: Sorting out three forms of judgment. College English, 55(2), 187–206.https://doi.org/10.2307/378503