BIAW (F20)
BIAW (F20)

Feedback Menu

One of the learning goals for English 110 is for you to “take ownership of your work and gain an understanding of your own voice, style, and strengths.” This feedback menu is designed to help you to do this. 

Below are some descriptions of the possibilities for writing feedback that I can give to you on any particular assignment in this class. While my feedback doesn’t affect your grade, I hope that pairing it with other parts of the class (i.e. peer review, discussions, and optional visits to the Writing Center) will help you to develop your understanding of your writing, and that this moves you toward the goals that you set for yourself. My goal is to help you to develop your writing in ways that feel useful to you rather than using a one-size-fits-all approach and overwhelming you with comments that you might not need or want or have the interest in applying. 

Please note: for your final “exam” in this class, you will submit a portfolio of your work from this semester. If you’re aiming for an A or a B, you’ll need to revise some of the writing that you do using feedback that you get from your peers, from me, and from the Writing Center if you choose to go. So this feedback might also help you to know about places you could further expand, develop, or clarify. 

Ideas / Big Picture / Global Concerns Feedback

If you request this kind of feedback, I will primarily concentrate on:  

  • Summarizing the major ideas in your draft as I am understanding them. This can give you a better picture of what you have communicated (at least to me as a reader, though you will want more opinions than just mine!)
  • Telling you about whether or not I think you’ve developed a particular point that you’re making in sufficient detail. Are you stating a major point, supporting that point with evidence, and analyzing your evidence completely?
  • Adding questions for your consideration or for further developing your major ideas
  • Commenting on how I see your evidence connecting to your analysis
  • Concentrating on organization: do your paragraphs seem to connect to one another in a way that seems logical to me? Do I see an opportunity for you to reorder them? Are you burying the most important information or your own ideas too far into a paragraph or a draft? (I am very guilty of this as writer…)
  • Concentrating on idea repetition. Are you saying the same thing in different words over and over again? This is very common! 

Grammatical / Punctuation / Local Concerns Feedback

If you request this kind of feedback, I will primarily concentrate on: 

  • Pointing to patterns of grammatical or usage choices that are unfamiliar to me as a reader. Doing the reading for this class will show you why I am uncomfortable “correcting” every “mistake” in your work. But this kind of feedback can give you some information about differences that I notice, and then you can make choices about what to do with those differences. 
  • Pointing to punctuation choices that are unfamiliar to me as a reader
  • Pointing to places where I have difficulty understanding something that you have written
  • Pointing to sentence-level choices that I think could benefit from some more precision (i.e. you use a general term when you might be looking for something more specific)
  • Pointing to sentence-level choices where your writing could be more concise (i.e. you could use fewer words to say the same thing—I have a problem with this in my own writing!!) 

MLA Style and Citation Incorporation Feedback 

I will give you MLA style and citation feedback on some of your major assignments as part of meeting the minimum requirements. However, on other assignments where it’s not required, you might want to practice it anyway. This will be especially useful to you if you plan to take other courses in the humanities (where MLA style is often required). So, if you request this kind of feedback, I will primarily concentrate on:

  • Whether or not you have incorporated secondary sources into your text in a way that conforms to MLA standards (i.e. you have correctly formatted block quotes, direct quotes, paraphrases, etc.)
  • Whether or not you have sufficiently summarized or paraphrased something to avoid accusations of plagiarism
  • Whether or not you have correctly formatted citations in MLA for your Works Cited list

Resources / Additional Info Feedback 

If you request this kind of feedback, I will primarily concentrate on pointing you in the direction of additional resources and information from the field of Writing Studies that relates to your writing. This is a good type of feedback to ask for if you’re interested in this topic and you want to (now or later) do more reading or thinking about it.

Tell Me Something Good About Myself! 

A lot of writing instruction is premised on the idea that we are deficient writers with deficient writing that needs serious rehabilitation. This means that many of us don’t develop a sense about what is GOOD about our writing. We only learn to see the problems. If you request this kind of feedback, I will concentrate on where I see the biggest strengths in your writing.

Just the Facts

This is a required class. I know that this means that not everyone in this class cares about developing their writing. That’s OK! You can choose this option if you just want to know whether or not this assignment has passed the minimum requirements for the grading agreement. I promise that it will not hurt my feelings if you choose this (and only this) option. Giving feedback takes time, and I would rather not give you feedback if you don’t want or need it. 

Sample request paragraphs: 

For each assignment, I will ask you to write a paragraph (or a comment on Slack) directing me toward the kind of feedback that you want me to give to you. You can ask for all of these types of feedback, or select from the menu. 

A request for feedback paragraph could look like this: 

“Hi Lindsey. For this draft, I would like for you to primarily concentrate on giving me feedback on ideas / big picture / higher order concerns, and also on giving me additional resources on this topic. I am very interested in this topic, and I think I might want to do further research on it later in the semester. I could see myself revising this piece for my portfolio. So, it would be nice to have some ideas of how to develop this further. I’m especially interested in whether or not you think that my organization is working, because I’ve gotten feedback from teachers in the past that said that my organization needed help. Thanks!” 

Or it could look like this:

“Hi Lindsey. For this draft, I really just want to know whether or not I’ve met the minimum requirements. I don’t think I want to pursue this topic any further, and I don’t plan to make revisions to this draft beyond the ones that I have to make for the grade. Thanks.” 

Or it could look like this:

“Hi Lindsey. I’m really curious about my grammar, punctuation, and usage for this draft, but I also want to make sure that my “big picture” ideas are clear. It would be very helpful for you to summarize my main ideas to me and then to point to any unfamiliar patterns of grammar or usage that you notice. Also, I have very little confidence in my ability to write in English, so it would be helpful to hear something good about my writing.”