A recent comment by my mentor last week has got me thinking about instructor feedback. She was handing back the first paper and she told the students that they shouldn't be frightened by the amount of writing that they saw on their papers. She didn't want them to think that she was trying to tear their papers apart, she just wanted them to know what they could work on for revision. At the end though, she mentioned that sometimes she forgets to put positive feedback on the papers and that they shouldn't take that as a personal slight. I was a little surprised because I have always tried to give students at least some kind of positive reinforcement on all of their assignments. Not that I don't give them critiques as well, but I feel like sometimes instructors are so focused on finding what's wrong with the paper that they don't notice what the students may have done right. Most of the students in our classes are not English majors and many of them are not confident writers. Being too/solely negative in your comments can have a damaging effect.
The worst case of damaging feedback I've seen was in the second year of my MA. A previous student came to me to talk about an assignment he was doing for his current English class. He was extremely upset because on the second page of his paper the instructor had written that she didn't read the rest of the paper because the first part was too bad. I was shocked. Had this student been one of my strongest writers? No. Did he struggle sometimes with grammar? Yes. Was his writing bad enough that it hindered the meaning of his papers? Not at all. I was so mad at this instructor (and I still am! Your still on my list lady!). I knew that this student had always come up with great topics to write about and good ideas about those topics. He simply struggled with more of the grammatical aspects of writing, which was common at that school because we had a lot of students that came from very large, underfunded high schools. And yes, sometimes I had to get on this particular student about proofreading his papers, but now he was telling me that he didn't even see a point to turning anything else in. He was afraid to go talk to the instructor because he thought she would just tear him down further. He was even considering just failing the class (it was too late to drop) because he said the comments on his first paper were similar. This student did need guidance in his writing and he did need to have a lot of critiques on his papers. However, the negativity of the instructors comments and her failure to acknowledge that he had any strengths in his writing made him just give up. To me the point of FYC classes isn't to weed out the bad writers, it's to help develop those writers so that they can be successful in the future and sometimes that development needs to include building their confidence.
I had exactly same comment on my paper a couple years ago.
ReplyDeleteI told her this paper had been reviewed by a tutor in the writing center.
She wanted to know who was it.
I said "Why do you want to know?"
She said "The tutor must get fire..."
The instructor wanted me to get more attention to an academic writing.
I understood it.
However, I felt like she did not care how much I spend time for it, she did not even want to know contents. I felt like she only wanted to get a good product from me...
Now. I am with a paper of 103 student in my mentor class. It has many grammatical issues. I am thinking how could I encourage him to get a positive motivation without grilling him about who was your tutor.
I agree that positive commentary is necessary--especially for students at the beginning of their academic writing careers. When my students e-mail me drafts, even if it's not a high quality paper, full of grammatical mistakes, and unorganized in that stage, I always tell them how excited I am to read their final paper and find something else to compliment them on--whether it be the student's choice of topic or their improvement on formatting and citing. I feel like this allows students to feel that they are improving and can see movement toward the goal: becoming a better writer. On students' final draft, it becomes easier to find something to comment on positively. Even on peer review sheets, my final question is always: What was your favorite thing about this paper? I think that peer compliments are just as important as instructor compliments when it comes to writing. Recognition drives students to put forth more effort, so why an instructor would overlook giving recognition and positive feedback is beyond me.
ReplyDeleteRegarding the instructor who did not read anymore, I have seen students' papers with similar comments; although, it is generally when a student's paper has missed the purpose of the assignment so that the product (no matter the content on the remaining pages) would earn an F. From what I have seen, the paper is marked with areas of improvement and the students are given chances for resubmitting another paper afterward. For an instructor to stop, not give feedback, and not allow an opportunity for another submission seems unnecessarily cruel.