🤔 What’s the point of having a feedback menu?

Rather than giving each student exactly the same style and level of feedback on each thing that you submit, the menu helps you to customize what you want depending on the type of assignment you’re submitting, the stage that you’re in, your goals, what you need, and what you want to know.

Part of the purpose of asking you to request specific feedback is for you to take some ownership over your work rather than just trying to give me what you think I want. Another reason that I do this is so that you develop a vocabulary for talking and thinking about your writing. This can help you to see things that were harder to see in the past. You can also use this menu as you’re editing your own draft.

📝 How do I use this?

Each time you submit a weekly work assignment that requires writing, a revision, a draft, or a final draft, there will be a spot on the assignment submission form that asks you to request feedback. Part of meeting requirements for every assignment is filling in each of the boxes on this form.

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,” or “I want big picture feedback.” Also please do not request help with “grammar,” because this means something really different to everyone. 

Instead, consult the menu below, think about this specific piece of writing and what you want to work on, think about what you’ve gotten feedback on in the past, and think about where you are in this stage of the draft.

Also think about how much you care about this piece of writing: are you going to make these changes? Or are you ready to move on from this assignment? All of these things will help you to determine what to ask for.

🗓️ Weekly Work Requests

These feedback requests are good for when you’re in the earlier stages of a draft or when you’ve just stated to think about something.

✅⚠️ Just the Facts

You’re not going to be fascinated by everything that you write in here. That’s OK. You can choose this option if you just want to know whether or not this assignment has passed the minimum requirements for the grading agreement.

I give feedback to around 60 papers every week. I promise that it will not hurt my feelings if you choose this (and only this) option. Giving feedback takes time, and I would rather not give you feedback if you don’t want or need it. However, if you tend to choose this option every week, I’ll eventually ask you to make more specific requests.

🥺 Tell me Something Nice!

A lot of writing instruction is premised on the idea that we are deficient writers with deficient writing that needs rehabilitation.

This means that many of us don’t develop a sense about what is WORKING about our writing. We only learn to see problems.

If you request this kind of feedback, I will concentrate on where I see the biggest strengths in this draft. I will respond to your work as a reader who is engaging with the most exciting, moving, insightful, funny, interesting, or thrilling parts of your work.

💡Ideas and Big Picture Stuff

Reader response: Ask me for reader response feedback if you want to know about places that moved me or excited me about your writing, or where I felt confused or needed more information.

Your voice: If you are using secondary sources or evidence from a text to support your points or analyzing a text, ask me if I think you’re relying on the author’s words too much or if your own voice is leading the point and you’re using someone else’s ideas as support.

Use of evidence: Ask me about whether you’re using paraphrases effectively, or synthesizing sources (i.e. bringing multiple sources together) well. Ask me if you think there’s sufficient evidence for the claim that you’re trying to make. Ask me if your evidence convinces me as a reader. You can also point to places that you’d specifically like for me to focus.

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 that your analysis is explaining your evidence. You can also point to places that you’d specifically like for me to focus.

Additional resources: If you were interested in this topic, you can request that I send you additional or related resources so that you can keep reading and thinking about this.

🎤🤳🏻📷 Genre expectations

Following (or intentionally subverting) genre conventions: Especially if you’re writing or composing in a genre that is new or unfamiliar to you (i.e. you’re making a podcast episode and you’ve never done that before), ask me about whether you’re meeting what I understand to be the expectations of that genre. Where are you conforming to the expectations? Where are you departing from them in ways that feel productive to me? Where are you departing in ways that were confusing or that didn’t work for me?

🔢 Organization

Redundancy: Ask me if there are places in this draft where it feels like you’re repeating yourself.

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). Does it feel like you’re just going through the list of questions and answering them one by one, or are you transitioning a little more smoothly?

📚Sources, plagiarism, and citation

Foregrounding your own voice: Ask me if I think you’re overwhelming this text with other people’s voices or if I think your voice is the most present and that you’re using other sources to support your own project.

Source incorporation: If you are incorporating secondary sources or working with a text in your composition, ask me about whether you’re doing this in a way that conforms to the standards of this genre as I understand them.

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? Did you give credit where credit is due?

Works Cited list: Not every project is going to have a Works Cited list, but for those that do, did you correctly format the citations according to the style guide that you’re using?

Misc. MLA: Did you do all of the other things you’re supposed to do to meet formatting guidelines (i.e. Heading is correct, title and subheadings are correct, font size, spacing, page numbers, etc.)

📑 First and Final Draft Requests

These requests are better for major assignments (first and final drafts) when you came up with the organizational structure on your own.

🥺 Tell me Something Nice!

You can also request that I tell you something nice about your first draft (I probably will anyway!). If you request this for the first draft in particular, please also request something else.

💡Ideas and Big Picture Stuff

Reader response: You can also ask me for reader response feedback on your first draft (as you may have done with your weekly work) if you want to know about places that moved me or excited me about your writing, or where I felt confused or needed more information.

Your voice: If you are using secondary sources or evidence from a text to support your points or analyzing a text, ask me if I think you’re relying on the author’s words too much or if your own voice is leading the point and you’re using someone else’s ideas as support.

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.

Use of evidence: Ask me about whether you’re using paraphrases effectively, or synthesizing sources (i.e. bringing multiple sources together) well. Ask me if you think there’s sufficient evidence for the claim that you’re trying to make. Ask me if your evidence convinces me as a reader. You can also point to places that you’d specifically like for me to focus.

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 that your analysis is explaining your evidence. You can also point to places that you’d specifically like for me to focus.

🎤🤳🏻📷 Genre expectations

Following (or intentionally subverting) genre conventions: Especially if you’re writing or composing in a genre that is new or unfamiliar to you (i.e. you’re making a podcast episode and you’ve never done that before), ask me about whether you’re meeting what I understand to be the expectations of that genre. Where are you conforming to the expectations? Where are you departing from them in ways that feel productive to me? Where are you departing in ways that were confusing or that didn’t work for me?

🔢 Organization

Reverse outline: Ask me for a reverse outline, which will tell you what I think you’re doing in each of your paragraphs and how they fit together. You could ask for this for the entire draft or in a specific section. This helps you to visualize your own organization.

Redundancy: Ask me if there are places in this draft where it feels like you’re repeating yourself.

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). Does it feel like you’re just going through the list of questions and answering them one by one, or are you transitioning a little more smoothly?

📚Sources, plagiarism, and citation

Foregrounding your own voice: Ask me if I think you’re overwhelming this text with other people’s voices or if I think your voice is the most present and that you’re using other sources to support your own project.

Source incorporation: If you are incorporating secondary sources or working with a text in your composition, ask me about whether you’re doing this in a way that conforms to the standards of this genre as I understand them.

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? Did you give credit where credit is due?

Works Cited list: Not every project is going to have a Works Cited list, but for those that do, did you correctly format the citations according to the style guide that you’re using?

Misc. MLA: Did you do all of the other things you’re supposed to do to meet formatting guidelines (i.e. Heading is correct, title and subheadings are correct, font size, spacing, page numbers, etc.)

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 are 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 and I may not be your audience!) 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.

❓Frequently Asked Questions About the Feedback Menu:

Can’t you just tell me what to fix?

I want you to develop a sense of ownership over your own work and some language for talking and thinking about your own writing. If I give you a “to do” list of changes, and you make the changes, the piece becomes a way for you to satisfy my desires for your writing rather than a way for you to make progress on the things that you care about.

Also, because there is no single standard of “quality” writing—no one way to speak and write in English, no “best” or “most professional” way to write in all circumstances for all time—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! And giving someone back an essay where you’ve identified a bunch of “mistakes” is not really that motivating to most people.

What are other reasons you use a feedback menu?

I love reading writing that you wanted to do and I love to deeply engage with it in ways that you asked me to. And that 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 citation styles already, and others have no idea what those are. Some want a really comprehensive review of everything, and some students just need a little encouragement. 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.

If you’re turning in weekly work and it meets requirements (I’ll tell you), you don’t need to revise it, but all of your weekly work should help to prepare you to write the major, end-of-unit assignments, so please DO incorporate those revisions into your first draft.

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. 

In that box, you’ll write a request that might look like this:

“Hi Lindsey. For this draft, I would like for you to primarily concentrate on giving me feedback on my ideas. I think I’m answering the questions about the text, but I wasn’t sure about whether I’m saying enough about [XYZ] specifically. I’m also 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 continuing to think about this in the future. 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 to get some style feedback on this draft. I think the ideas are pretty strong, but I’m not really sure about my sentence variation, and I’d like to hear more about what you’re seeing. I’m also 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. Also, it would be nice to hear what you’re seeing as a major strength in this draft. I’m proud of this piece because I think that it shows that I’m improving my analysis skills, but I’m not sure.”