When we think about academic writing, generally, and how we might characterise it for students learning how to express their thinking at university, what might we tell them? This blog has discussed some of this here, and here, but let’s just say for the purposes of this post that we might tell students that academic writing is not vague – it has something specific to say, and generally it tends to try and say it as clearly, and concisely as possible. An excellent article I read recently has really helped me to better express a great deal of my advice to writers I work with on how to be less vague, and more focused. There is a lot of advice out there for writers on how to polish, strengthen and improve their writing.
But students, especially undergraduate students, find it difficult to turn all of this advice into improved writing – at least, this takes some time, and they tend to need a good deal of guidance and opportunity to practice, make errors, and receive feedback that can help them to avoid those errors in future writing. Theresa Lillis wrote in her 2001 book on student writing that essay writing advice is often most helpful to writers who already have some experience of writing in the right sorts of ways. Fresh out of school, with no real sense of what an academic argument is or how to create one in a piece of research-led writing, most undergraduate students read essay writing advice with a sense of overwhelmed confusion, and their attempts to put the advice into practice tend to produce different kinds of results, some more successful than others.
Image credit: Charles Schultz
So, how can we assist students, practically and practicably, with their writing? How can we show them what better and poorer writing looks like in our disciplines or fields of study (rather than in a generic way), and how to turn the weaker aspects of their writing into strengths over time? Feedback, I hear you say. Yes, I would agree, but feedback from whom? Many lecturers would groan on hearing this word ‘feedback’, especially those who teach increasingly large classes in disciplines where students need to write a great deal, the more the better for their learning (think here especially of the humanities and many of the social sciences). With large classes and reams of written work to mark, lecturers often skimp on the detailed written feedback, or give only the most cursory comments, perhaps supplementing this with ‘global’ feedback in a lecture for the whole class on common errors and misunderstandings. This tends to mean that students keep making these errors, and the development of their thinking, writing and ability to create and critique knowledge in the discipline takes far longer to progress.
Yet, feedback is what all writers need. Critical, thoughtful, clear feedback that praises what is well-considered and realised in our writing, and points to what has been less well realised and needs further revision and rewriting. Whether in larger or smaller classes, in disciplines where students write a great deal, and are expected to improve with each piece of writing, feedback is essential. Preferably individual feedback that engages students in thinking differently about their writing, although this is often a logistical challenge for many lecturers and tutors.
Peer feedback, then, has been used as a partial solution to these challenges in many university courses globally. Students give feedback on writing to their peers, either in classes or in tutorials, in structured tasks that try to guide students on what kinds of feedback to give and how to give it well. Many of these instances of peer feedback work well, probably as many struggle to achieve their goals. Giving constructive, kind-but-critical, and helpful feedback on a piece of writing – feedback that will make it possible for the writer to make effective revisions – is hard work. Telling someone a paragraph they have written has no point is not that hard, but giving them advice that helps them to understand why there is no point, and how to both create a point and then reconstruct a paragraph that makes sense within the piece of writing – that is much more challenging. Many students, especially undergraduates, need guidance in order to provide their peers with this kind of feedback – this is a practice that needs to be learned, and that can be taught or scaffolded.
There are many, many research studies that have been published on feedback – the principles of good feedback, how to work with feedback as a writer, how to structure peer feedback-giving exercises, why feedback is ignored by students and how to get them to pay attention, and so on and so on. One of the questions asked in many of these studies goes something like: ‘how do we get students to learn from feedback, and improve their writing?‘ (The corollary of this seems to be ‘why don’t students learn from the feedback they get?’) One paper I read recently on a peer feedback-giving exercise revealed an unexpected finding in the students’ evaluation of the exercise: that they learned more about their own writing from giving feedback to their peer than they did from the feedback they received.
This is interesting, because many of the studies I have read focus almost solely on what to do with feedback received, and how to make sure that feedback givers give better feedback, so that the receiver can do more with it to improve their writing. But what of the lessons about writing that feedback-givers can consciously learn, and act on in their own writing? To return to the example above, if you need to give a writer feedback on how to improve a pointless paragraph, or one that doesn’t quite develop its point, you may find yourself reflecting on this aspect of your own writing and seeing it differently. Going back to it with fresher eyes, you may find yourself revising your own paragraphs, ensuring the the points you are making expand your argument, and are well supported with evidence.
Students can learn from the feedback they receive if it is given in understandable, actionable ways. But creating peer feedback-giving exercises in writing programmes, courses, or centres provides an excellent opportunity not only for students to learn how to give useful feedback, but also to learn more about their own writing through being asked to read, think about, and comment on a peer’s writing with the aim of giving them clear, constructive and useful comments and advice.
Writing in the Academy 