Teachers' Feedback

Teachers' feedback

The type of feedback English language teachers provide to their students may encourage or discourage them to reformulate the erroneous structure. For example, if the teacher mostly comments on form and points out every single error the student makes, the obsession with mechanical and grammatical errors may have a stultifying effect on the developmental writer. However, if the teacher enhances the students' awareness of the errors, incomplete, and confusing ideas, by asking open-ended, higher order thinking questions, the students will eventually understand that the main purpose of writing is to negotiate meaning, and that precision and clarity are of utmost importance in communicating with the reader in writing.  

What follows are some examples of teachers' feedback. Read them carefully and decide whether they are constructive, and therefore effective in raising the developmental writer's awareness of the errors in her or his written work, or whether they are not useful for the student. 

·      Well stated – you do a good job suggesting the tensions to be addressed.

·      Good enough – your job here then is to give a principled way of determining when individual rights should  time common good and/or vice versa.

·      What is your position?  What position will this paper defend?

·      Yes – good idea to define key terms.

·      Because the question posed asks you to defend a view of what should be done – not to describe what is done.

·      True – in a sense, all of western political thought can be seen as an attempt to define public good, using the theorists to aid you here is a good idea…in fact, it’s the reason we read time.

·      Good point!

·      This is what I had in mind.

·      The question hanging around in the background of your description here seems to be: who determines what the common good is effects what it is.  Who is key.

·      These comparisons are an effective way to illustrate your point.  2 suggestions: always cite, i.e., that is not common knowledge: a cite is necessary.

·      You could have avoided #1 by sticking more closely to the theorists of American political thought; that is, you could have cited quotes from those texts and made quick references to the comparison.

·      OK – the question of what your position is here is raising its head again.  You have done a good job describing but you need an argument in defense of how the government best promotes the public good – by maximizing the liberty of advancing common goals.

·      So, do you support the Korematsu decision or not?  On what principled basis?  You raise provocative questions, but do not present a cohesive position.  I’m having a hard time deciding what you see as the determining features of these truman super public good should turn into rights.

·      If you could define this more specifically, you would go a long way in answering.

·      Good – a rule of thumb is exactly what we need.

·      Ah, but as you suggest on page 2, people’s rights are at the core of individual rights in the American definition at least.  You need to defend your view.

·      This captures the subtle view of the relation between the two – well said.

·      This should be at the beginning of your paper – the position you want to defend…but it needs much more air-time (more in-depth description, etc.) than you give it here.

·      This is a thoughtful paper that touches on the key tensions raised by the question posed.  In addition, especially in the attempt to define “public good,” it is clear that you have a very effective strategy in mind as you write.  Unfortunately, these strengths are counter balanced by 1: too little, too late syndrome – as you can see from my notes on pages 5 & 6, you touch on but fail to delve sufficiently into the tasks that should be at the heart of your paper. 2: the logic of your argument gets confusing - –especially on page 6 where you focus on the key questions most directly.

·      What about the opposite? To what extent can something that curtails an individual’s rights be for the common good?

·      Isn’t this the clear and present danger test?

·      Why? Part of your task here is to explain why?

·       This is the position you need to defend, to explain why the common good is served by individuals choosing freely and independently in the process, to answer the central argument.

·      When is this?  How do we identify this in stance?  And, this seems to contradict your original position…or at least be in tension in it.  IN any case, your task is precisely to explain on what principled basis the common good might be served by curtailing individual rights.

·      Good example.  Why?  On what principle do your draw this conclusion?  Some might argue: sex offenders give up their rights—not

·      The strength of this paper is its originality.  You consider a wide range of topics and examples that you have clearly given much thought to and feel strongly about.  Well done – this is ultimately what this class aims to encourage you to do.  You own voice comes through in your comfortable integration of court cases and current events.  On the other hand, the paper suffers from a meandering organization and lack of a clear consistent and coherent defense of your initial position.  At a number of points you put forth convincing reasons for conceiving of the common good as the protection of individual rights…and others you suggest this is not always the case.  The challenge of the question posed is to delve into the hard cases, those that you touch are only slightly.  This paper would have been much stronger had you focused on this challenge.

After you have evaluated the feedback, be prudent and eclectic in providing corrective feedback to

your students when you respond to their written work. Asking questions that mostly focus on

meaning and pointing out a few global errors that impede comprehension can enable the

developmental writer to revise the preliminary draft with relative ease and success.