Feedback Strategies

(Lucy Writing Advice Cartoon from UC Writing Centre)

• "5 Tips For Taking Feedback Like a Champ" - Megan Bruneau
• Receiving feedback for my writing has never been a strength of mine. I, like the author of this article, get very defensive of my work. It is always very hard for me to take classes where I have to share my work with others let alone have people critique my work. However, this semester I am in this class that hinges on blog comments and I am in a creative writing class that workshops writing projects and let me tell you it has been an adventure already. The tips that Bruneau gives in this article are definitely going to stay with me as I navigate this semester. Tip number two stayed with me the most. I need to keep reminding myself that "having growth areas is a good thing" and that any feedback given is meant to strengthen my writing.
• "How to Give Students Specific Feedback That Actually Helps Them Learn" - Justin Chando
• Two points from Chando's article stood out to me in particular. "It should not be confusing, vague, or general" and "what is communicated should be actionable." Aside from being very defensive of my work I really dislike feedback that is not clear. At one point in my college career, I had a professor who would not give clear feedback but then turn around and expect students to fix their writing, according to the unclear feedback, and turn it in again to make sure we were taking his or her feedback seriously. This teaching method is fine in theory, but the way it was executed was inherently flawed. The professor would not clarify what he or she meant when questioned. He or she would say things like "I wrote what I wanted you to fix on page number 3," but would not clarify what he or she meant even if a student did not understand what was written on "page number 3." The point of this anecdote was that feedback needs to be easily understandable and something that can be fixed for it to be successful.