In This Chapter
Providing feedback to students is one of the most challenging parts of a composition instructor’s job (Caswell; Straub, Practice), and making use of that feedback (whether provided by a professor, tutor, or classmate) is just as challenging for students.
While research has shown that students prefer feedback that helps them to revise some substantial part of their paper (Haswell; Lizzio and Wilson), they don’t always receive this kind of feedback—and even when they do, many students still tend to have a difficult time making revisions.
This chapter 1) helps students understand that having difficulty using and interpreting feedback is normal—that using
feedback successfully is actually a learned skill—and 2) presents recommendations students can tailor to their own contexts and goals.
Typical Challenges
There are a number of reasons why people have a hard time using feedback on their writing. These challenges include
- Seeing writing ability as an unchangeable character trait
- Deciphering the feedback received
- Deciding whether to take actions recommended in the feedback
Challenge 1: Seeing Writing Ability as an Unchangeable Character Trait
Many students see their writing ability as an inherent and unchangeable part of who they are. They feel that they are “good” at English or “bad” at English. Often these appraisals of their own writing skills come from earlier English classes that focus specifically on grammar.
This kind of thinking is what Carol Dweck calls a “fixed mindset,” which is when you “[believe] that your qualities are carved in stone” (6). If you think your writing ability is “carved in stone” or unchangeable, then what incentive is there for looking through your feedback?
Instead, we should have a “growth mindset” toward our abilities to write, a mindset that measures success by our ability to grow and isn’t steeped in fear of how many mistakes we make (Dweck 17). Essentially, if you understand that you’re not an inherently good or bad writer, but instead a writer who can improve, all of a sudden, the feedback you receive becomes a valuable tool.
Composition scholar Shirley Rose emphasizes this point: no matter who you are, “all writers always have more to learn about writing” (59). Even expert writers have to learn and grow as they adapt their writing for new audiences, purposes, and constraints. By seeing ourselves as ever-growing writers, we can embrace revision as an essential part of our learning process and acknowledge that we need practice to improve (Downs 66; Yancey 63). Feedback on our writing is essential
to that process.
Challenge 2: Deciphering Your Feedback
Once you understand that all writing is a process, and that all writers have more to learn, it becomes easier to see feedback not as critiques of failure but as powerful tools to help you improve as a writer.
Feedback should help you grow as a writer. But how exactly you’re supposed to grow can be ambiguous—if not totally confusing. It can be diffic