Every semester, usually just after midterm, I get an email or have an office visit from a student that includes one of the following questions:
- “Why do I keep making Cs on my papers?”
- “What am I doing wrong?”
- “How can I improve my grades?”
In nearly every case, I have to return a question for a question: Have you read the feedback? Almost all say they have, but the ensuing discussion usually demonstrates they either have not or have only understood a fraction of what they have been told.
Few students are aware of how much time and energy is spent reading and responding to written work. Of course, the time it takes to grade a piece of writing varies depending on the course the assignment is composed for and the complexity expected in the writing. Most English teachers I know tell me they spend an average of twenty minutes per complete essay. However, I would guess most students do not spend more than twenty seconds reading anything on the paper, usually a cursory glance at the grade and no more.
This discrepancy is important to point out, not to shame students, but to illustrate the difference between what instructors and students see as the “work” of a class. For most teachers, grading papers is the hardest, and perhaps most significant, work they do, because the feedback is an essential part of learning. This work is not about what one does “wrong,” but the multifaceted ways to improve one’s writing. For many students, the work is over once the essay has been handed in (or submitted online), and notes are just red letters to indicate a certain level of failure.
Why students generally do not read feedback from their teachers is a subject well worth exploring, because it could shed light valuable light for students about making good choices in their education, but teachers at all levels and all subjects need some ideas for modifying their own grading process so they can best help students. I am not talking about holistic scoring versus what one of my colleagues calls “death by a thousand minus ones.” Teachers in all subjects need to periodically fine-tune how they approach responding to students if they want better results.
One problem regarding feedback is its complexity. When a student turns in an essay, the paper is a lot of rows of letters in the same font and size as all the other letters. When the student gets it back, there are arrows, abbreviations, and disapprobations, all often in red ink. For even good students, reading such markings (even online) is an adventure in the translation of texts of dubious value. Teachers know that information has value. Students usually have to learn by very hard experience to prize that knowledge.
Rarely do people have the kind of experience where one is learning how to write via another person standing over the shoulder to guide the way. Generally, we do not have coaches blowing a whistle at mistakes or clapping our backs when we perform well. Even if you attend a face-to-face class, feedback is a kind of distance learning encounter. If you are a student who wants to get the most out of feedback so that you improve, you will have to change the way you look at it.
There are three main categories of notes that teachers make on student writing, and within those categories are several divisions. The categories are:
- Content
- Organization
- Language
These are based on different elements in the reading experience. That is, these are different ways that the information gets to the reader. Content is essentially the message the writer is presenting and the material or information used to deliver it. Organization, as you might have guessed, is the order of material, and it includes the arrangement of paragraphs and the order of sentences within a paragraph. Language issues include corrective notes about grammar and punctuation errors on one hand and style choices on the other. (In my own classes, I add categories of research and documentation for writing that require them, as these are different elements for different projects.)
When students have papers returned to them, they are likely to see all three kinds of notes, and it can be very confusing. Sometimes instructors help students by providing them with a useful rubric to help them ferret out which notes fall into which categories. Some teachers are even creative about notes, using a color-coding system to help differentiate. However, often a student is left to figure it out with little more than an unopened handbook and the offer to come by during office hours.
Too often, teachers painstakingly mark essays and then present a kind of “The information is there if you want it” approach that is not helpful, especially to the student who is making efforts to get something from feedback. Too often, students will look at the grade, make assumptions about what that grade means, and avoid learning. Both need to change.
There a certainly a number of ways to pull the notes apart and make sense of them. For several years, I have recommended students use a kind of grid system that can be quickly put on a sheet of paper or made from a spreadsheet program. On the side, the student can write the words Content, Organization, and Language. Across the top, the student lists the notes. Here is a rough example:
It is possible to substitute some parts of the grid with words or phrases that indicate divisions of the categories or expectations for the assignment. For example, one could note key words in the directions or the number of quotes expected in the essay and where they should come from. But for now, let’s keep things simple.
Now look at the same grid with notes added by the students after reading feedback:
Note that the student has added information in the Language section to indicate pages in the assigned handbook where they can locate information about problems noted. Notice also that three areas have been highlighted where the student has received positive feedback.
Placing notes into categories and separating them by type, helps the student writer in a number of ways. First, notes can be transformed from overwhelming scribbles to manageable data. Doing so takes much of the emotion out of the learning process so each issue can be addressed one part at a time. Second, the student writer can actually see where their work succeeded, or partially succeeded, instead of thinking of feedback as a conglomeration of wrong moves. The student will certainly want to replicate what went well.
Because the student’s notes are text-specific, that is, focused on the precise material of the essay, the student also has material to work with in conferences or correspondences with the instructor and tutoring sessions. Frequently I have had students send me an email with a generic request, “Please explain what’s wrong with my paper” or “I don’t know what I did wrong.” While I understand the feelings of frustration or confusion, particularly when the student feels they have worked hard and earned a less than stellar grade, it then takes some time for me to help them get at the heart of what should have been learned from the experience of writing an essay. When the student refers to specific notes in specific places, it is much easier to find helpful ways to explain what I said and what they can do to improve.
It is very hard for both students and teachers to change habits of grading and interpreting feedback. However, if education is to have any value, people in both groups have to commit to evolving and adjusting. Feedback is certainly tied to the grade for any assignment, but it should do more than provide a checklist justifying a score. It should be a diagnostic tool: for the student, as an indication of what needs work and what needs to be applied in the future; for the teacher, as sign of where communication can be improved.
EBK
Ellisue B. Klingensmith is an experienced educator who has lived in many places around the world and divides much of her time between libraries and walking trails she finds or makes.