If you are a supervisor or teacher you will need to provide written feedback to students. This is a skill that takes time to develop. Here are some tips I’ve developed over the years. As a student there are also ways you can encourage better feedback from your supervisors.
It helps to read some books like Schimel’s book on ‘writing papers that get cited and grants that get funded’ or Steven Pinker ‘Sense of Style’. These give you the words to describe what is wrong and how to fix it (before those books I new a sentence could be improved and I knew how to improve it, but I couldn’t explain to the student why or how to do it).
Just as cooks, musicians and ballplayers have to master some lingo to be able to share their tips and learn from others, so writers can benefit by knowing the names of materials they work with and how they do their jobs.
Steven Pinker - Sense of Style
Provide comments on their writing rather than just editing. Explain why it doesn’t work and how it can be improved.
Remember to give positive criticism as well. saying ‘good’ is ok, but that’s harder for the student to interpret. Better to use encouragement like ‘After reading this I now understand X for the first time, thankyou!’ or ‘what helped me understand this was that you broke a complex idea down into several smaller ideas in separate sentences’.
On the flip side, if you think something is wrong with the writing, don’t just leave a vague comment like ‘vague’. Explain what is wrong and how it can be improved. Even if you are not sure what is wrong, you can still leave a comment like: “I found this sentence hard to understand, can you explain in plain words what you mean?”.
Focus on big picture of ideas and overall structure first. Once that is good then narrow in on things like grammar and sentence structure (though sometimes the sentences are so bad you do need to fix those so you can understand what the ideas are). Therefore I encourage starting with outlines of topic sentences.
Actually a common problem is not having topic sentences, outlining can help with that.
Encourage your student to send you lots of small bits of writing often, rather than you spending 2 hours editing a draft once every few months. Lots of small changes are easier to learn than getting dumped with heaps of comments all at once.
Notice common mistakes and problems and point them out to the student, along with a solution. These are often the areas where they can make the fastest improvements.
Its common that you’ll have to show them something several times before they learn. That’s just part of the process. Be patient.
When they are stressed or time poor they may default back to bad habits, so just talk about that with them when you notice it, like “I noticed you are doing XXX again, what’s going on for you right now?”
Sometimes sloppy writing can be a sign of a deeper issue, such as stress about a deadline or a personal issue. Noticing early warning signs of stress and anxiety will help you better support your students.
Its ok to leave some mistakes or areas of improvement until next time. You don’t have to rip apart every draft and smother it in red corrections.
Remember academic culture is a culture of criticism. But our natural tendency is to to require five positive comments to offset a single negative comment. So it might take some time for your student to get used to extensive criticism on a draft. This is why I prefer to only provide a handful of criticisms (with improvements of course) per draft. (and to request frequent small amounts of editing, rather than ‘all at once’).
If you are seeking feedback, then there are some ways you can encourage feedback that is more useful.
Read the books I mentioned above and practice the advice they give.
It helps to tell your supervisor (or collaborator) what you want. Rather than sending a whole draft, send them part of a draft. Or if you do send the whole draft let them know what you specifically want feedback on. For instance, the overall structure, the methodological approach, the relevant literature, or the grammar and writing style.
Its faster for them if they just need to comment on one aspect. Be sure to let them know in the email, so they are more likely to respond quickly. Lots of small chunks of feedback are also easier for you to learn from.
Rather than saying “I want feedback on X, Y and Z aspects of my draft” you can say “how can I improve X, Y and Z aspects of my draft?” This will encourage constructive feedback. Someone could legitimately respond to the first question with a list of things that are wrong. Whereas, for the second question you are asking them to tell you how you can improve.
You can also ask “what have I done really well in this draft?” to encourage positive feedback. Other ways of asking this question are: “how did this help you understand my topic?”, “what did you learn from reading this draft?”
You can also encourage chunking of your feedback by asking questions like “what is the most important thing I can do to improve this draft?” or “what is the most important thing I can do to improve my writing?”, or “what are three things I should focus on first?”
Encourage them when they give you helpful feedback! Supervisors are often still learning how to give feedback. It’s really helped me that my students have told me when my feedback has helped, and how it helped them.
Designed by Chris Brown. Source on Github