What’s a Feedback Menu?
On each writing assignment that you complete, I will ask you to tell me what kind of feedback you would like for me to give you. You will also use this menu to request feedback from your peer reviewers during peer review, and we will use it to talk about writing together when we’re looking at samples.
Ultimately, the feedback menu gives you some options for selecting the kind of feedback that you would like to have. It is also a tool that can help you to self-edit your work, or to give you some language for engaging with other people’s work.
Learning how to ask for specific feedback is one way that you can work toward the learning goal that asks you to “take ownership of your work
Just as you wouldn’t come into a restaurant and say “I’ll take one of everything,” please do not write a feedback request that says “all feedback is fine.” Being as specific as possible helps me to help you, and also shows that you’re thinking enough about your work to slow down and ask for what you need.
Here are the options:
Big Picture Feedback
Here are some big picture things you might request.
- Your accomplishment of the goal of this assignment: Ask me how well I think you’re accomplishing the major goals of this assignment.
- Your main idea(s) and purpose: Ask me to give you a one-sentence summary of what I think this paper is about, which will help to tell you whether or not I understood what you were going for.
- Your organization: Ask me to tell you what I am noticing about how your ideas fit together throughout your draft or within a specific section that is uncertain for you. Do I think that the ideas build on one another pretty smoothly? Or do you have a draft that is basically several mini papers that are loosely connected? Please do not ask for this feedback if you’re doing something where the organization is specified for you, like in Weekly Work 2: Journal.
- Your transitions: Ask me if I think there are clear connections between the previous idea and the next one (in a whole paper), or between things like your claims, your evidence, and your analysis (within a paragraph or section).
- Your evidence: If you are using secondary sources to support a point, ask me if I think you used just the amount of the quote that you actually need to make your case. Ask me about whether you’re using paraphrases effectively, or synthesizing sources (i.e. bringing multiple sources together) well. Ask me if I think that your evidence is CRAAP-test approved, or scholarly. And / or ask me if I think your evidence is effectively supporting the point that you say that you’re making.
- Your development and analysis: Ask me if there are any ideas in your paper that I feel could use some more explanation or “unpacking,” or if there are places where it feels like you’re rushing to get to the next point. Ask me if I think there are places where you’re repeating yourself. Ask me if I think that your analysis is explaining your evidence.
Style Feedback
- Your sentence structure: Ask if you have good “sentence variation,” or if I’m noticing that all or most of your sentences start in the same way (e.g. The author says X. He says Y. He also says Z.) Ask about whether it seems like all or most of your sentences are roughly the same length, which can lead to your writing feeling kind of boring. Ask if there paragraphs or larger sections where you might vary your sentence structure to give it some more interest.
- Word choices: Ask about whether there any word choices that you’re making that are confusing or distracting to me as a reader (and make sure to consider whether *I* am your ultimate reader for this particular assignment, and whether other readers might feel the same — remember, I’m just one person!) Ask whether your language seems precise (i.e. you’re describing something in a really specific way rather than relying on a cliche), or if your language is too vague / broad? Ask if I’m noticing if you using the same word over and over again, or if there are any words that stand out to me in any other way.
- Punctuation choices: Ask if I think you’re using punctuation in conventional or unconventional ways (this might be things like comma splices, run-on sentence, sentence fragments, apostrophes in the wrong place, etc.)? How do I think that this impacts the style of the piece?
- Misc. style: Is there anything else about your style that I’m finding noteworthy (really interesting, really distracting, or just otherwise worthy of note?)
Grammar Feedback
Are there any patterns of grammatical choices that are unfamiliar to me as a reader? Or is there a grammatical component of your piece that makes it difficult for me to understand your meaning? 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.
MLA Style and Citation Incorporation Feedback
I will automatically give you some 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). You could ask for things like:
- Source incorporation: Are you incorporating 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.)?
- Plagiarism avoidance: Did you sufficiently summarize or paraphrase something to avoid accusations of plagiarism? Are you using too much of the author’s original language or sentence structure?
- Works Cited list: Did you correctly format the citations in MLA for your Works Cited list at the end of the paper?
- Misc. MLA: Did you do all of the other things you’re supposed to do to meet MLA formatting guidelines (i.e. Heading is correct, title and subheadings are correct, font size, spacing, page numbers, etc.)
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.
Can’t you just tell me what to fix?
One learning goal for this class is for students to “Take ownership of their work and gain an understanding of their own voice, style, and strengths.” If I give you a “to do” list of changes, and you make the changes, I’m not sure that this helps you to take ownership of your work.
Also, because there is no single standard of “quality” writing—no one way to speak and write in English—I can’t tell you what to “fix.” All I can tell you is what I notice about your writing as one reader with one set of experiences. I can tell you how I think it conforms to or diverges from what I expected as a reader and what effect this has on me. I can tell you what makes sense to me, and where I’m confused. I can tell you if I need more explanation. I can tell you what moves me.
You’ll be doing some peer review this semester, and you will also be in the position of a reader. I hope to encourage you to develop this skill of noticing, rather than judging, too. Detecting and alerting our colleagues to patterns, to things that we personally respond to, and to things that we don’t understand can help them to make their piece more responsive to bigger audiences, and it has the added benefit of helping us to see these things in our own work. But none of us are “the” authority on what good or bad writing is: not even me!
What are other reasons you use a feedback menu?
I love giving feedback, and it takes a lot of time. I have tried a lot of other ways to cut back on the amount of time that it takes, and this can really limit how much time I want to spend with pieces of work that students really wanted to write. I can’t make you want to write stuff, but I do think you’ll be more receptive to my feedback if you asked for it, and if you have some say in how it ultimately looks.
Can I ask for multiple things?
Yes! Some students want a lot of feedback. Others want a little. Some students want me to engage just with their ideas. Others want me to point to stylistic patterns, grammatical patterns, or other sentence-level stuff that I’m noticing. Some students have heard from other teachers that they “really need to improve their grammar,” but they’re not sure what that actually means. Some are really familiar with MLA style already, and others have no idea what that is. Some want a really comprehensive review of everything, and some students just need a little encouragement. So ask for what you need.
Do I have to address your feedback to meet requirements?
You are always allowed to make decisions about your own writing. In some cases, you will be asked to account for which feedback you decided to take and which feedback you ignored (from me and from your classmates) in reflective writing that you do. So, while you don’t need to take my advice, you will need to say why you made the choices that you did and why you avoided making choices that your peers and I suggested. As long as you can account for why you made the choices that you did, you’re doing your job.
Sample request paragraphs:
Whenever you turn in a writing assignment, I will ask you to write a paragraph 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. Does the order of my ideas make sense to you? Are my transitions working? 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’d like you to stick with big picture feedback on this one. Last time, I worked on organization, and I want to know if it’s better in this draft. I’m curious about whether or not my paragraphs are organized in a way that seems logical, and whether you think my evidence was well-selected. I’m not sure if my major points are too repetitive. It kind of feels like I’m saying the same thing over and over again. If you could also look at my sentence structure and my source incorporation, that would be great, but the priority is organization.
