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Assignment feedback

I provide feedback in different ways based on the assignment. My goal is to give you as much guidance as I can within my available time and resources. You are always welcome to ask for clarification and/or more feedback.

Feedback through text styles

When you submit paper assignments, I use text styles to provide feedback. My hope is that marking some text quickly will be enough for you to figure out the errors on your own, and then I can spend more time giving you written comments in other areas.

What the styles mean:

  • light green text means that these words are misleading or technically incorrect in some way
  • yellow highlighting indicates either:
    • a grammar error (ask me if the error is not obvious to you)
    • an citation error (either content or formatting, ask me if you can’t figure it out AFTER reading the citations page carefully)
  • bolded text should be reworded because
    • it has a meaning or connotation that doesn’t fit the context,
    • it is not the appropriate tone for academic writing (usually, too informal)
    • it uses complex/“academic” vocabulary where a regular word would be just as good and easier to understand

Approach to feedback

Sometimes students will say, ""You only commented on part of my paper. Will you comment on the rest?” I understand why it may seem strange that I comment on only limited parts of a paper. To understand my reasons, consider two ways of thinking about paper comments:

  • Approach 1: what matters is the quality of the submitted paper, as that determines the student’s grade. The student submits a draft. The teacher marks the draft so the student knows what’s wrong with the paper. The student revises the paper and submits a final draft. The final draft starts with full marks and the grade is reduced every time the teacher notices a problem. If no major problems remain by the final draft, the paper gets an A.
  • Approach 2: what matters is improving the student’s writing skills, and writing papers is a way to build those skills. The student submits a draft. The teacher marks the draft so the student can learn ways they can improve their writing skills, both by avoiding errors and by building on strengths. The comments point out concrete examples of writing issues and suggest ways to deal with those issues. Since there are countless ways to improve a paper, the teacher must selectively choose what to comment on. There is no expectation that the teacher will comment on the entire paper, since there is no way to mark every way a draft can be improved (at least, no way that takes less than 3 hours per draft). In terms of comments, the difference between a good and weak draft is not the number of comments, but the type or focus of the comments. Part of the learning process involves the student taking the teacher’s guidance and figuring out how to use it to improve their writing even when the teacher does not point out exactly where and when to change things.

In this course, I use approach 2. To be fair to all students, I devote a certain amount of time to each paper. I read the whole paper and record audio or video comments on the main strengths and weaknesses in the draft. With my remaining time, I make marginal comments or style text to indicate areas for the student to review. As I do this, I make on-the-fly decisions about what to comment on and how to phrase my feedback based on the student, the paper, and my other comments so far.

I believe I can achieve my goals of helping you improve your writing without marking every instance of every issue in a draft. I don’t feel that my role is to help you make your draft so good that it can’t be improved, and (to be honest) neither you nor I have enough time to achieve that goal in one semester even if we wanted to. Of course, if you want to continue work on any papers for the course, such as to improve them for submission to an undergraduate journal, I’m happy to continue working with you to improve them.

If you have any specific questions about parts of the paper that I didn’t explicitly comment on, just ask. I’m happy to respond to questions over email or messaging as time allows, or to schedule additional meetings during the week. Unfortunately, I cannot comment on emailed sections of papers or drafts.