“Students’ Perceptions of Written Instructor Feedback on Student Writing”

by Eric Wisz | Xchanges 13.2, Fall 2018

Discussion

The recorded interviews were transcribed and coded for thematic patterns. These patterns are not intended to be generalized to all undergraduate students. Rather, my goal is to offer student voices to the conversation on instructor feedback.

Participants’ Perceptions of Form and Content

Straub’s (2000) study suggested that students perceive a clear distinction between form and content in writing. Participants mentioned that Example 1 was focused on grammar (errors or form) while Example 2 was focused on ideas. According to Participant K, “I believe the person who writes this [question] wants more of the significance of the topic while this [directive comment] is more focused on grammar issues.” I find this form-content binary fascinating because, as previously mentioned, both feedback examples commented on the same areas and gave the same general direction as suggestions for revisions.

For many participants, how the feedback is framed — as a question or as an explicit suggestion — may impact how the participants perceived what the instructor was asking them to do during the revision process. When asked how they would go about revising the paper if they had received Example 1’s feedback, eight participants noted that they would quickly make sentence-level revisions based on the instructor’s suggestions. For example, Participant G said about Example 1, “The straightforward—I think—nature of just telling you, ‘Do this,’ doesn’t really leave a lot of room for thinking about how you might want to improve the paper on a more substantial level. It’s just the line-by-line editing.” However, participants discussed how they would approach revising Example 2 more holistically, referring to the paper’s main argument or thesis statement.

Instructor as a Reader

Overall, these interviews suggest that participants were more receptive to feedback when it was given in a reader’s perspective, supporting the theories of Ädel (2016), Brannon and Knoblauch (1982), Elbow (1973), and Shaughnessy (1977). Participant I noted: “I think that [feedback comment in Example 2] is always nice to help remind you to take a step back and reflect on what you’re writing and how it’s being read by people who aren’t you.” Participant F expressed: “If I’m missing [providing the reader context for evidence], I would want someone to tell me, so my readers aren’t lost in what … they’re reading. And it helps build the paper, not necessarily tear the paper apart.”

Participant L calls the writer “the person in charge of the essay” and sees the instructor’s role as notifying the writer where the intended idea may not be entirely expressed to the reader. This study suggests that framing feedback as a reader’s perspective indicates to participants that the decisions they face during their writing processes are theirs to make and that the instructor’s role is to indicate the impact of these decisions on potential readers.

Open-Ended Questions in Feedback

Eight of the participants focused on the questions from Example 2 when discussing feedback that they like, finding the questions intellectually stimulating and beneficial for their learning processes, similar to Straub’s (1997) findings. According to Participant J, open-ended questions might lead to “a more … thought-provoking revision process” as students apply the same questions elsewhere in their writing. Participant C suggested that posing questions “gives a better idea of why you’re doing stuff, which helps so that you actually learn as opposed to just plug a hole.”

However, participants also identified potential shortcomings of open-ended questions. Participant A argued that open-ended questions do not model for student writers the type of discourse-specific language that students might not know but that might be necessary for meaningful revisions. Participant K noted: “Like, yeah, I understand you’re questioning the person’s writing, but questioning them doesn’t help them in a way because they might be confused themselves too.”

Suggestions/Examples in Feedback

Participants saw the lack of suggestions and examples provided in Example 2 as one of the feedback’s shortcomings. Although participants liked the idea of the instructor providing alternative phrasings or examples, some participants did not appreciate the tone of the feedback in Example 1 because they felt like the feedback was too commanding. Participant H addressed how the tone of Example 1 seemed commanding: “I felt like they were ordering me around… It’s a little different than just telling me what to do. It’s saying, ‘Maybe you should think about it.’ Instead of, ‘Do it.'”

Explanation in Feedback

Participants in this study tended to prefer explanation when it comes to feedback addressing grammar concerns. Participant L pointed out that, in terms of Example 1, providing explanation for grammar rules instead of just correcting grammar errors will help student writers not commit these errors in the future: “If putting punctuation at the end of quotations is a persistent problem, just explaining why once could be super—because it could help them way into the future.” Participants suggested that explanation of grammar rules is a way to ease frustration and improve understanding of the grammars of standardized Englishes, supporting the findings of Bevan et al. (2008), Lizzio and Wilson (2008), and the suggestions of DeNisi (1996) and Nicol (2010).