It would make my job considerably easier as a teacher of writing if I just offered feedback on surface issues in my students’ writing. What is considerably harder is what seems to be the elephant in the room here and that is talking about how what students are reading for a particular writing assignment is accurately and logically connected to the point of the assignment. How many times have we realized that the reason for hard-to-understand writing is misunderstood reading? Surely more useful feedback would have students discuss with their teacher how and why they integrated a particular reading into their writing assignment.
There's no simple solution to the problem, but requiring students to submit outlines before drafting essays could help ensure they're on the right track (and of course, first TEACHING them how to create clear linear outlines, if that's what's needed). With an outline, you can catch misunderstood reading before students have invested time and effort in writing an entire essay. Ideally, the final product will be better too.
I recommend taking a very close look at Quill.org’s approach to using AI for feedback. Inspired by Judith Hochman’s approach, this nonprofit has carefully, thoughtfully, ethically, and with great pedagogical integrity trained its AI feedback using expert guidance from teachers in the field.
Just to clarify: neither Judith Hochman nor The Writing Revolution has endorsed Quill.org's approach. They have no connection to the company.
I don't know much about Quill's approach myself, but from what I see on the website it's not clear to me that it's designed to have feedback build on prior writing instruction, which is the approach I'm advocating. I think that's especially important when it comes to more global feedback -- i.e., not just at the sentence-level but having to do with the organization of paragraphs, essays, and arguments.
Reading a post that focuses on writing and feedback is so refreshing. Several points resonate with me. First, the vast majority of teachers were not taught how to teach writing. Further, vague corrective feedback isolated from the learner has proven ineffective. The social brain must be engaged through connections with teachers and peers. Simply stated, writing instruction needs a refresh. Much of my work has been focused on writing. I refer you to my book, Feedback that Moves Writers Forward. Also, when giving feedback on grammar, students are often unfamiliar with using grammar as a way to craft and amplify meaning. For this, I refer you to my latest book, Not Your Granny's Grammar.
Students need experience with interpreting writing and providing effective feedback long before we can expect them to act on feedback. Learning what an appositive is can only be the beginning of instruction - improving clarity and reader understanding by recognizing, editing, and using appositives is another.
If feedback tells me as the writer that I used too many appositives or I see a code (app) telling me to check appositives, I need the background knowledge to use a critical eye on my writing and successfully make changes.
In other words, students need not only the what and how appositives work in the structure of a sentence, but most importantly the WHY the correct use of appositives add clarity.
Lastly, there are social aspects to receiving and acting on feedback. The giver of the feedback must be respected and the receiver must believe that the changes requested are possible. If a student has low confidence/low experience with both writing and the topic, feedback is difficult to use. The classroom culture then plays a key role.
I agree with you that the vague, nonspecific comments made by writing teachers do not improve student writing. It’s refreshing to have that called out!
I developed a method of writing instruction I call Reader Response Feedback where the teacher shifts their energy to being a reader rather than evaluator. Their comments give a student writer the experience of being read—how a passage struck the teacher-reader, what more the teacher-reader needed to see in the writing to follow the train of thought or to develop a description so it popped to mind.
We’ve been using this strategy for 25 years in my work at Brave Writer. I wrote a book about it: Help! My Kid Hates Writing.
Oh I will check them out! Thank you. My Winter Break listening is sorted. :) I am at a small, rural school in Northern New South Wales Australia and TRW has been transformational for me. I’m leading my faculty in a session on Whole Class Feedback next week and am in the process of looking into NMM. So this post is helpful and timely. I’d be fascinated to know if you have seen what AERO (an Australian Government Education Research body) has put out on explicit literacy instruction and if you’ve seen it, what you think.
As always, I'm delighted to see a new Natalie Wexler post! 😀😀😀😀
I think you are ignoring one aspect of this problem: most people are not very good at giving effective feedback. This is a general rule, and is hardly limited to teaching basic writing skills (for instance, it's a huge problem with academic peer review). Part of this is that it's a real challenge to identify the main issues that need correction; many people often focus on minor details rather than the core of the work. Also, everybody has a subjective opinion, and it's hard to be objective when the writer is expressing an opinion that the reviewer disagrees with. Finally, most people are not very good at making concrete, actionable, specific suggestions for improvement, and many critiques take the form of "I didn't like it" and leave it at that.
When I read through this article, it seems to me that at no point do you consider the possibility that one reason for the ineffectiveness of feedback is that quality of that feedback is often poor. Of course, that's not the entire problem, but it would be good to at least acknowledge that it exists.
You're right that generally most people struggle to give good feedback, but when it comes to writing instruction (which is my focus in the post), I do think a good method can help teachers give more concrete and actionable feedback. The Writing Revolution method provides specific things to look for in writing and a shorthand that teachers and students can both understand, making feedback more efficient.
For example, one of the strategies included in TWR is using appositives--phrases describing nouns. It's important for students to learn that structure because it appears a lot in written language but rarely in oral language. Once students know what an appositive is and how to use one, teachers who want students to vary their sentence structure or add information can just write "app," and students will know what that means and what to do.
Of course, problems with organization, clarity, and comprehension of content are trickier to deal with in feedback, but a method like TWR can still help -- as long as teachers themselves know how to identify the problem.
It would make my job considerably easier as a teacher of writing if I just offered feedback on surface issues in my students’ writing. What is considerably harder is what seems to be the elephant in the room here and that is talking about how what students are reading for a particular writing assignment is accurately and logically connected to the point of the assignment. How many times have we realized that the reason for hard-to-understand writing is misunderstood reading? Surely more useful feedback would have students discuss with their teacher how and why they integrated a particular reading into their writing assignment.
There's no simple solution to the problem, but requiring students to submit outlines before drafting essays could help ensure they're on the right track (and of course, first TEACHING them how to create clear linear outlines, if that's what's needed). With an outline, you can catch misunderstood reading before students have invested time and effort in writing an entire essay. Ideally, the final product will be better too.
Indeed outlines are helpful and the place where feedback is perhaps most needed through discussion.
I recommend taking a very close look at Quill.org’s approach to using AI for feedback. Inspired by Judith Hochman’s approach, this nonprofit has carefully, thoughtfully, ethically, and with great pedagogical integrity trained its AI feedback using expert guidance from teachers in the field.
Just to clarify: neither Judith Hochman nor The Writing Revolution has endorsed Quill.org's approach. They have no connection to the company.
I don't know much about Quill's approach myself, but from what I see on the website it's not clear to me that it's designed to have feedback build on prior writing instruction, which is the approach I'm advocating. I think that's especially important when it comes to more global feedback -- i.e., not just at the sentence-level but having to do with the organization of paragraphs, essays, and arguments.
Reading a post that focuses on writing and feedback is so refreshing. Several points resonate with me. First, the vast majority of teachers were not taught how to teach writing. Further, vague corrective feedback isolated from the learner has proven ineffective. The social brain must be engaged through connections with teachers and peers. Simply stated, writing instruction needs a refresh. Much of my work has been focused on writing. I refer you to my book, Feedback that Moves Writers Forward. Also, when giving feedback on grammar, students are often unfamiliar with using grammar as a way to craft and amplify meaning. For this, I refer you to my latest book, Not Your Granny's Grammar.
Students need experience with interpreting writing and providing effective feedback long before we can expect them to act on feedback. Learning what an appositive is can only be the beginning of instruction - improving clarity and reader understanding by recognizing, editing, and using appositives is another.
If feedback tells me as the writer that I used too many appositives or I see a code (app) telling me to check appositives, I need the background knowledge to use a critical eye on my writing and successfully make changes.
In other words, students need not only the what and how appositives work in the structure of a sentence, but most importantly the WHY the correct use of appositives add clarity.
Lastly, there are social aspects to receiving and acting on feedback. The giver of the feedback must be respected and the receiver must believe that the changes requested are possible. If a student has low confidence/low experience with both writing and the topic, feedback is difficult to use. The classroom culture then plays a key role.
I agree with you that the vague, nonspecific comments made by writing teachers do not improve student writing. It’s refreshing to have that called out!
I developed a method of writing instruction I call Reader Response Feedback where the teacher shifts their energy to being a reader rather than evaluator. Their comments give a student writer the experience of being read—how a passage struck the teacher-reader, what more the teacher-reader needed to see in the writing to follow the train of thought or to develop a description so it popped to mind.
We’ve been using this strategy for 25 years in my work at Brave Writer. I wrote a book about it: Help! My Kid Hates Writing.
https://juliebogartwriter.com/help-my-kid-hates-writing
Oh I will check them out! Thank you. My Winter Break listening is sorted. :) I am at a small, rural school in Northern New South Wales Australia and TRW has been transformational for me. I’m leading my faculty in a session on Whole Class Feedback next week and am in the process of looking into NMM. So this post is helpful and timely. I’d be fascinated to know if you have seen what AERO (an Australian Government Education Research body) has put out on explicit literacy instruction and if you’ve seen it, what you think.
I just wrote my thoughts on a post to my LinkedIn. I'd love to have any educators join the conversation there! https://www.linkedin.com/posts/annie-jenson-9200a0196_what-happens-when-students-get-feedback-on-activity-7348473193596153856-TEgQ?utm_source=social_share_send&utm_medium=member_desktop_web&rcm=ACoAAC3uTygB2A6LwWaCbCCYAnc_eN0wMzORvJc
As always, I'm delighted to see a new Natalie Wexler post! 😀😀😀😀
I think you are ignoring one aspect of this problem: most people are not very good at giving effective feedback. This is a general rule, and is hardly limited to teaching basic writing skills (for instance, it's a huge problem with academic peer review). Part of this is that it's a real challenge to identify the main issues that need correction; many people often focus on minor details rather than the core of the work. Also, everybody has a subjective opinion, and it's hard to be objective when the writer is expressing an opinion that the reviewer disagrees with. Finally, most people are not very good at making concrete, actionable, specific suggestions for improvement, and many critiques take the form of "I didn't like it" and leave it at that.
When I read through this article, it seems to me that at no point do you consider the possibility that one reason for the ineffectiveness of feedback is that quality of that feedback is often poor. Of course, that's not the entire problem, but it would be good to at least acknowledge that it exists.
You're right that generally most people struggle to give good feedback, but when it comes to writing instruction (which is my focus in the post), I do think a good method can help teachers give more concrete and actionable feedback. The Writing Revolution method provides specific things to look for in writing and a shorthand that teachers and students can both understand, making feedback more efficient.
For example, one of the strategies included in TWR is using appositives--phrases describing nouns. It's important for students to learn that structure because it appears a lot in written language but rarely in oral language. Once students know what an appositive is and how to use one, teachers who want students to vary their sentence structure or add information can just write "app," and students will know what that means and what to do.
Of course, problems with organization, clarity, and comprehension of content are trickier to deal with in feedback, but a method like TWR can still help -- as long as teachers themselves know how to identify the problem.