Guide to Providing Feedback
For those of you keen to join in on this initiative but who don't yet feel confident enough to evaluate other people's work or have never had any experience doing so, this thread will hopefully serve as an
'Intro to Essay Marking' crash course so that you too can reap the rewards of learning to think like an assessor!
1. RulesFirst thing's first:
you don't have to be a high scoring English student in order to evaluate an essay. In fact, sometimes the 'high scoring' pupils run into the most trouble in assessment tasks because they've never taken the time to consider what separates their work from others' or what exactly they're doing right, and it's actually the 'mid-range' students who are the most perceptive when it comes to common slip-ups. Plus, receiving good marks, or even full marks on a piece doesn't mean you understand
why you've received such a score, and students who are used to thinking about their own work more critically (as opposed those with the complacent 'nah, I'm fine with English; look at my marks!' kind of attitudes) will be far better equipped to recognise faults and advise others on how to go about fixing them.
You also
don't have to be a current Year 12 student. Language Analysis is one of the areas of study that will remain mostly unchanged for the new 2017 Study Design, so students in Year 11 and below are more than welcome to participate.
Secondly, always keep things civil. Remember, marking essays and receiving feedback is meant to be a
mutually beneficial and productive activity, not one designed to put others down or make yourself feel superior. Sometimes it can be useful to provide personal reference points and anecdotes when going through someone else's work (i.e. 'I really struggle with writing clear topic sentences too, and my teacher recommended...' or 'I used to be really bad at linking between paragraphs, but I found a formula that worked well was...') but in other instances, it's best to remove yourself from the equation and just comment on things objectively, rather than say things like 'you should check out my essay because I can do this waaaaay better than you' or 'I had trouble with this concept and never understood it, you probably won't either, lol.'
Third, and following on from the previous point, always
keep things constructive. There is a very clear difference between giving someone sufficient constructive feedback and just plain insulting them and their abilities. Remember to
make their piece the focus, not them, so instead of saying 'you don't know how to integrate quotes and you can't write linking sentences,' try: 'the quotes you're using aren't very well integrated, and your piece's linking sentences are a bit unclear.' Also, you are perfectly free to only comment on the strengths of a piece if that's all you're comfortable doing. See if you can articulate what a piece does right,
(and why those things are right,) as this is equally beneficial for both you and the recipient.
In short, do unto others!
Give the kind of feedback that you would like to receive yourself. Us omniscient English mods will see to it that those being incredibly generous and/or diligent will be rewarded with feedback of their own.
2. Incentives First and foremost: you will be transforming the way you think about English for the better! I mean no hyperbole when I say that assessing other people's work is the most useful way to spend your time preparing for the exam in Year 12, and it's what I credit a great deal of my result to. Training yourself to think like an assessor is invaluable, and you will reap the benefits in your own work before long.
It may not seem like it at first, but when you mark other people's work, you become a better writer yourself. Gradually, you'll start picking up on little mistakes, or becoming aware of what you as a reader need to know at certain junctions (e.g. topic sentences, transitions between analysis - if these things aren't made clear, then it's easy to get confused, so when writing your own piece, you should prioritise clarity at these points in particular.) Even if you're marking someone whose essays are far above or below that of your own skill level, you'll still pick up on things here and there.
No essay is 100% perfect, and no essay is a 100% train wreck. Every one of them will do at least one thing right, and at least one thing wrong, so your ability to pick apart both the strengths and weaknesses of different pieces of analysis will make you more attuned to what you need to do to score well, and what you need to avoid doing to prevent the assessors from docking marks or becoming irritated.
For those that care, respect points will be showered upon you from myself, bangali, and
an enigmatic third source, as well as any other user who comes across this thread and finds your advice impressive or useful. So, you know, bragging rights, etc.
The advice and abilities you hone here can also be beneficial in other ways throughout the year. You could set up an essay exchange amongst some of your school peers (which I can personally attest to be invaluable and convenient) or even get to a stage where you are able to evaluate your own work, making you even more prepared for assessment.
You might find that after you provide feedback, someone else jumps in with a counter point or an alternate way of looking at things. For instance, if you've mentioned that someone's body paragraphs need to flow more from one to the other, another student might leave some feedback which instead suggests linking the end of each paragraph back to the overall contention instead. Sometimes both of these options will be perfectly viable, but other times, you may actually end up clarifying some of your own misconceptions just by reading through the feedback that others provide.
But wait, there's more!
...by way of pre-emptive rebuttal:
No, you're not obliged to provide feedback in exchange for receiving it yourself, though I do hope the list of incentives above convince you that the former is just as useful as the latter.
Yes, technically if you're in Year 12, these people are your "competition," but that's honestly a really stupid attitude to cling to. The ATAR Notes community doesn't encompass the whole state
yet so already there'll be a limited population sample who'll actually be benefiting here. If you'd be prepared to deny yourself a huge advantage just on the off chance that other students might get some benefit as well... then I wish you the very best of luck for when you inevitably have go out and face an adult world full of people that are far more sensible and mature than you
Finally, even if you're viewing this from a purely selfish perspective, you will gain far more by participating than you will by simply watching others do so, and other people will be learning and honing their skills either way, so you might as well jump on this bandwagon for the sake of your own progression throughout this year.
Also, even if you're a bit unsure of yourself, jumping in with a few dot points of feedback is still very valuable and much appreciated. Some of us oldies with no lives will drop by occasionally and go over anything that hasn't yet been looked at, and we tend to go somewhat over board what with us having no lives and everything, but you shouldn't feel as though you're expected to write an exhaustive 2000 word reply correcting and commenting on someone's work. If you can - great! But the standard we're expecting is going to be more realistic than that given that you're in Year 12 and probably do have a life.
3. Forms of FeedbackBroadly speaking, there are three types of feedback you can choose from.
Firstly, there's the
dot-point commentary. This is where you simply write a list of points commenting on what was done well and what still needs work, which is probably the level of feedback you tend to get from your class teachers, give or take a few scribbled annotations on your essay. This doesn't require you to go through the piece with a fine-toothed comb, nor does it mean you have to pick out any really tiny mistakes like sentence structure or vocabulary errors. Therefore, this is kind of a 'global' focus that just looks at the piece as a whole and makes some broad statements about it. It's quick, it's easy, and it's the most efficient use of your time because the assessors also mark in this holistic way, so this will likely be favoured by those who want to contribute regularly but don't want to commit to length essay dissections every week.
Secondly, there's the
in-essay corrections and comments, which is most easily accomplished by using the 'Quote' feature on ATAR Notes and then adding amendments or observations in
bold or
red (or
green if you're determined to be different). This is a bit more of a commitment than just the dot-point commentary, but it does allow you to point out a whole host of tiny little problems, instead of needing to summarise them all in general terms at the end. You can also take this opportunity to explain your corrections as you make them by clarifying 'this word doesn't really suit the context of your discussion' or 'you're using this technique too often; try to find some other examples to analyse instead' etc. It's really up to you how much detail you choose to add when marking in this capacity, as you might want to break apart each sentence and comment on every possible improvement that could be made, or take a more comprehensive approach and just isolate the major trouble spots.
Thirdly, we have the
post-essay breakdown which is similar to the dot-point summary, only it tends to be a more descriptive version with a couple of paragraphs explaining and justifying your judgments about the piece. This will be in 'prose form,' which just means you'll write in complete sentences rather than fragments, which can be particularly useful if you're trying to explain something fairly complicated (like, for instance, why someone's piece needs to focus more on how the audience is
persuaded and not just how they
react.) Again, it's up to you how detailed you make things, though this kind of feedback is often the most accessible for the recipient because you'll be able to spell out your thought processes and perhaps even provide some examples of what you're talking about and what an improved version of certain excerpts would look like - all of which would usually be too difficult to fit into the dot point lists or in-essay commentary.
If you're opting for this kind of feedback, you might want to try and structure it in a 'sandwich-y' kind of way:
...wherein you open by commenting on some resounding strong points in the person's work, then list a few of the areas that need improvement before finally summing up their progress and what they need to do to improve in the future.
But you may be inclined to combine these different formats by, for instance, correcting the piece and making a handful of in-essay comments, as well as a post-essay explanation of major issues. Or perhaps you'll do a dot point list of concerns, but occasionally quote bits and pieces of the essay to make the occasional comment or correction. You may even have an entirely unique way of providing feedback - the choice is yours.
And whichever form of feedback you choose to give, rest assured that it will all be very appreciated, and we'll shower you with upvotes regardless. The different kinds are all useful in their own right, and receiving multiple bits of feedback in different forms can actually help identify issues that a single correction wouldn't have uncovered.
A few general things to avoid when providing feedback:
There's no need to provide a score out of 10, especially if you don't trust your judgement in this regard. Most of the tasks you'll be given as part of this Club won't actually be exam-standard; rather, they'll be specially chosen and crafted to bolster specific abilities which will end up helping you in assessment tasks. But because this isn't meant to simulate an exam-style exercise, there's no reason to apply exam-style expectations regarding numerical scores. The qualitative feedback will be far more valuable anyway.
Try not to make your commentary entirely positive or entirely negative if you can avoid it. If you're not able to find a single thing wrong with their work,
look harder! And likewise, if you can't find a single thing they're doing right, go back and try again. Even phrasing things in the context of 'you're on the right track with (
discussing the effect on readers,) but I think you could improve by...' or 'I can see you've made an effort to (
integrate quotes,) but you might find it more helpful to try...' is very valuable.
Try not to make snap judgments about what a person has done right or wrong unless you can a) provide evidence of them doing this, and b) explain why this is right or wrong. You don't have to say this every single time, but if you want to get the most out of this experience, then you should be taking a hyper-critical approach to your own assessment of people's work. Just providing stilted bits and pieces of commentary like 'your explanations aren't very good' or 'visual analysis was wrong' isn't overly helpful to you or the person receiving the feedback. You don't have to concern yourself too much with the length of your feedback, but try to ensure that you're providing adequate reasoning for your evaluation.
4. Feedback Template QuestionsThe following are a series of questions to ask yourself about the pieces you read. You can use these as checklists when marking, or even while writing pieces of your own as a kind of reminder of everything that needs to be covered.
If the answer to any of these is 'no' or 'not really,' or even 'I can't tell,' then you've just found an area of weakness that warrants some unpacking. From here, locate the part of their piece that demonstrates this problem, if applicable (e.g. the ends of paragraphs, the sentences with repeated vocabulary, the section of visual analysis that misinterprets the material, etc.) and try to explain how it has gone astray. Or, if the piece is missing something (e.g. not enough discussion about a certain key word in the prompt, no connections between paragraphs, etc.) then identify a spot in the essay where this should be so that this student can understand where it needs to be included next time.
If you so desire, you can simply copy+paste the list below into the post you're responding to so you can use this as a running sheet that flags areas of concern. Simply delete the questions and add in your commentary regarding how well or badly a piece has done in relation to the following sub-sections:
Language Analysis Essay Feedback Questions: Length and CoverageSpoiler
Is the piece an appropriate length given the task material?
Does the spread of the analysis reflect the spread of the material?
Is the analysis balanced across the written and/or visual pieces with an appropriate amount of explanation for each?
Does the piece appear to have covered the most important facets or 'gist' of the material?
Does the piece take into consideration any relevant background information or structural features (e.g. it being a blog, speech, magazine interview, etc.)?
Has the piece avoided summarising the material, or evaluating it by casting judgement on the effectiveness of the persuasion or providing their opinion on the issue?
Spoiler
Does the piece adopt a structure that is suitable to the task?
Are the paragraphs (if multiple) roughly even and balanced in terms of what they're covering?
Does the piece begin and conclude in an appropriate way?
Spoiler
Is the contention articulated in this piece accurate?
Has this piece expressed a comprehensive understanding of the overarching argument and sub-arguments?
Does the analysis in this piece help support the contention that has been identified?
Spoiler
Does this piece justify itself in terms of how language is used to persuade?
Does it use a method similar to the
what-how-why strategy in order to maximise efficiency?
Does this piece examine persuasive language and explain how it is persuasive?
Are there a few examples of close connotative analysis, and has this piece taken the appropriate opportunities to explore this language?
Does this piece have sufficient explanations as to how the audience are made to think, feel, or believe?
Is the piece accurate in its assessment of the audience's response and the author's intention?
Do the points raised in this analysis culminate in a discussion of why the author has made certain choices in order to get their argument across?
Spoiler
Does the piece have effective topic sentences that make the initial focus clear?
Are the topic sentences precise and well-worded?
Has the student avoided jumping into close analysis too soon?
Do the topic sentences outline a concept specific to the material as opposed to a very general concern relating to the issue instead of the material?
Spoiler
Have the quotes been well-integrated, and do they fit the grammar of the sentences they're in?
Has the student modified quotes with [square brackets] and ellipsis [...] where appropriate?
Are the quotes the right length, and has the student selected the most relevant language to include as opposed to inserting a whole chunk of the piece in their own work?
Do the quotes support the analysis being conducted?
Does the piece use a sufficiently varied amount of evidence and avoid using the same language multiple times, where possible?
Spoiler
Has the piece made succinct and obvious connections between different points of analysis?
Does the piece have a sense of flow in the way it transitions both within and between paragraphs?
Spoiler
Has this piece correctly identified a variety of important rhetorical and persuasive devices?
Are these devices linked to an appropriate quote or example to demonstrate their application?
Does this piece use the correct metalanguage when commenting on language, tone, and argument?
Spoiler
Does the analysis comment on any overarching tones in the material?
Does the analysis comment on any distinctive tonal shifts in the material?
Is this discussion on tone supported by quotes/evidence?
Spoiler
Does the piece choose an appropriate moment to comment on the visual?
Has the piece correctly identified the contention of the visual, or, at least, has the piece conducted sufficient justification for its interpretation of the visual?
Does the piece use metalanguage to describe the visual features and explain how and why they persuade?
Has the piece made effective connections between the written and visual material (where applicable)?
Spoiler
Does the piece make effective links between the different material?
Does the piece avoid comparing at the expense of analysing?
Is the piece able to successfully comment on the different contentions at play, and the different language features used in different pieces?
Spoiler
Is the wording and syntax of this piece clear and concise?
Are the sentences an appropriate length with the right amount of information packaged into each one?
Does the piece flow effectively from one piece of analysis to the next, successfully avoiding the trap of feeling like a string of unconnected bits and pieces based on annotations?
Does the expression and grammar do justice to the quality of the analysis?
I'll leave the rest of this thread open to anyone who has questions about the essay marking process. Remember that you can choose to post anonymously on this board if you wish, so drop us a line if there's anything you want to know about providing feedback and making the most out of this activity
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Topic: Guide to Providing Feedback (Read 2153 times)