Feedback on Writing

1.     Definition of Feedback

Feedback is conceptualized as information provided by an agent (e.g., teacher, peer, book, parent, self, experience) regarding aspects of one's performance or understanding. A teacher or parent can provide corrective information, a peer can provide an alternative strategy, a book can provide information to clarify ideas, a parent can provide encouragement, and a learner can look up the answer to evaluate the correctness of a response. Feedback thus is a "consequence" of performance. Winne and Butler (1994) provided an excellent summary in their claim that "feedback is information which a learner can confirm, add to, overwrite, tune, or restructure information in memory, whether that information is domain knowledge, meta-cognitive knowledge, beliefs about self and tasks, or cognitive tactics and strategies" (p. 5740).

2.      The Focus of Feedback: The Four Levels

The focus of feedback is critically important. According to John Hattie and Helen Timperley (2007:90) there are four major levels and that the level at which feedback is directed influences its effectiveness.

a)      Feedback Task (FT)

Feedback can be about a task or product, such as whether work is correct or incorrect. This level of feedback may include directions to acquire more, different, or correct information.

b)      Feedback Processing The Task (FP)

Feedback can be aimed at the process used to create a product or complete a task. This kind of feedback is more directly aimed at the processing of information, or learning processes requiring understanding or completing the task. For example, a teacher or peer may say to a learner, "You need to edit this piece of writing by attending to the descriptors you have used so the reader is able to understand the nuances of your meaning," or "This page may make more sense if you use the strategies we talked about earlier."

c)      Feedback Self-Regulation (FR)

Feedback to students can be focused at the self-regulation level, including greater skill in self-evaluation or confidence to engage further on a task. For example, "You already know the key features of the opening of an argument. Check to see whether you have incorporated them in your first paragraph." Such feedback can have major influences on self-efficacy, self-regulatory proficiencies, and self-beliefs about students as learners, such that the students are encouraged or informed how to better and more effortlessly continue on the task.

d)     Feedback Self as A Person (FS)

Feedback can be personal in the sense that it is directed to the "self," which, we argue below, is too often unrelated to performance on the task. Examples of such feedback include "You are a great student" and '"That's an intelligent response, well done."

Thus, there is a distinction between feedback about the task (FT), the processing of the task (FP), self-regulation (FR), and about the self as a person (FS). John Hattie and Helen Timperley (2007:90) argue that FS is the least effective, FR and FP are powerful in terms of deep processing and mastery of tasks, and FT is powerful when the task information subsequently is useful for improving strategy processing or enhancing selfregulation (which it too rarely does).

3.      Written Feedback Techniques

“When handing back students’ written work or using a computer ‘reviewing program’ to give feedback on word – processed documents we can use a number of devices to help them write more successfully in the future”, Harmer (2011:110).

In this case, Harmer (2011:110) stated that there are some techniques on written feedback:

a)      Responding

One way of considering feedback is to think of it as ‘responding’ to students’ work rather than assessing or evaluating what they have done. When we respond we say, how the text appears to us and how successful we think it has been and sometime how it could be improved. When we respond to a final written product we can say what we liked, how we felt about the text, and what they might do next time if the students are going to write something similar.

b)      Coding

Some teachers use codes and put them in the body of the writing itself or in a corresponding margin. This makes correction much neater, less threatening and considerably ore helpful than random marks and comments. Frequently used symbols of this kind refer to issues such as word order, spelling, or verb tense as in the following table:

Symbol	Meaning	Example
S	Incorrect spelling	s I receieved jour letter.
W.O	Wrong word order	W.O We know well the city.
T	Wrong tense	T If he will come, it will be too late.
C	Concord, subject and verb do not agree	C The policemen has come.
WF	Wrong form	WF That table is our.
S/P	Singular or Plural form wrong	S We need more informations.
λ	Something has been left out	He hit me on λ  shoulder.
[  ]	Something is not necessary	[  ] It was too much difficult.
?M	Meaning is not clear	?M The view from here is  suggestive.
NA	The usage is not appropriate	NA He requested me to sit down.
P	Punctuation wrong	P Whats your name?

When we use these codes we mark the place where a mistake has been made and use one of the symbols in the margin to show what the problem is. The student have to correct the mistake.

We can decide on the particular codes and symbols we use with the students, making sure that they are quite clear about what our symbols mean through demonstration and example. We might also consider having a two – stage approach with simple and more complex codes for students at different levels  (Cox and Evre, 1999).

We have to be cautious about the tone of our comments. The margin of a paper are small and can force us into short comments. When writing short comments, we tend to leave out the words that soften our message. While we my think “I’m not sure I understand your point here,” the limited space may cause you to write simply, “Unclear” or just “?”. Students can see comments such as these as unkind and unhelpful. Feeedback need not always be written in the margins but it can be in forms: individual conferences, taped responses, typed summary responses, etc (Nunan, 2003:93).

References:

Harmer, Jeremy. (2001). The Practice of English Language Teaching Third Edition. New York: Longman

Hattie, John and Timperley. (2007). The Power of Feedback. Review of Educational Research, 77, 81-112. Retrieven on Juny 11^st, 2014 from http://education.qld.gov.au/staff/development/performance/resources/readings/power-feedback.pdf

Lainuddin, Mochammad. The Effect of Giving Feedback to Students' Writing. Retrieved on May 18^th, 2014 from http://journal.teflin.org/index.php/teflin/article/viewFile/83/184

Nunan, David. (2003). Practical English Language Teaching. New York: McGrawn-Hill