Freeman's feedback

Prepping for Peer Review: A Few Words on Giving Constructive Feedback…

Feedback is constructive when its purpose is to help the person receiving it improve upon their work in some way.

So what’s not constructive feedback?

Statements that only consist of praise—“This paper is good.”

Statements that are only critical and demeaning—“You’re the worst writer ever; you should just give up.”

Over the years, I’ve noticed that “meaningful” (by which I mean helpful) constructive feedback has the following qualities:

· It is specific —it refers to particular things within the text being critiqued, rather than referring to the paper in general terms.

· i.e. you draw attention to a specific topic sentence you feel needs to be revised instead of discussing all topic sentences in general

· It is explicit —you explain, in detail, why you feel the specific thing you just drew our attention to needs to be revised

· If you do this, the person receiving the feedback will understand why you’re telling him/her that a topic sentence needs to be revised

· Your feedback is framed as a suggestion or question , as opposed to a command

· People tend not to respond well to phrases like “Write it like this.” Instead you might say, “Did you ever think of writing it this way?” or “What if you approached the issue like this?”

If you do all of these things, your feedback will be constructive and actionable, by which I mean that the recipient of your feedback will be able to read the feedback you gave them and decide for themselves if they want to enact the specific pieces of feedback you just gave them.

Here is a piece of feedback I gave Freeman on his research essay (It comes from a list in which I point out a handful of critiques on his essay):

“Topic sentences—while some of your topic sentences are on point, other are not. (See paragraphs two and three). A closer look at paragraph 2: the paragraph is largely about the potential strengths and benefits of ART, but the topic sentence reads “Assisted reproductive technology (including artificial insemination and in vitro fertilization) is often used when one member of a male-female couple is infertile; the resulting child is usually related to at least one member of the couple.” You might revise the sentence so as to be more predictive of the actual content of the paragraph (which happens to be the job of topic sentences).”

· Notice how the feedback is specific—I draw his attention to a particular topic sentence in need of revision

· I explain why I feel it needs to be revised

· The feedback culminates in a suggestion rather than a command.