Characteristics of Writing Intensive Core Courses

Feedback

One of the most powerful strategies for teaching writing is to provide feedback to students on a draft, then have them revise the work before turning it in for a grade.  “Providing feedback” is not editing or correcting.  Instead, the professor indicates strengths and areas of improvement for the student, who must then do the real work of revision (literally, “seeing again”).  Except in the rare cases when students have turned in a highly polished draft that is the product of extensive revisions already, most revising feedback focuses on “higher level” matters than mere grammar, punctuation, or style.  The faculty development seminars for the Core writing intensive courses will provide some strategies for encouraging effective revisions.

Some examples of revision comments are:

• Your draft is too one-sided to be effective.  That is, while you present the arguments for X pretty well, a lot of reasonable people would argue for Y instead.  Can you take into account their arguments and still defend your position?

• Your draft relies extensively on quotation and summary.  While these are generally apt, the paper doesn’t have enough of your own thinking.  For example, when you summarize X, what do you see as its significance or importance?

• Your assertion X lacks sufficient evidence to be convincing.  What facts or analysis could you provide to make your point.

• I have a difficult time following your line of thinking.  For example, on page 2 you jump between point A and point B, and the connection just doesn’t make sense.  You’ll probably need to write more obvious connections, but you might also have to rearrange the parts of the paper—or even discard some.