By Emily Long Olsen
Written Feedback (sometimes called “eTutoring” or “asynchronous feedback” at other centers) is one of the more oft-questioned services we provide in the Writing Center. Consultants aren’t sure about it because there are ways we feel that it can’t live up to our goals and mission. In our practice, we seek to work with students collaboratively, guiding and assisting. We want to help students recognize mistakes or missteps and work with them to interrogate these issues, identifying alternatives that might support their goals more effectively.
We often think of written feedback as a method that limits much of this work; we can’t collaborate, and we can’t communicate in real time. But when used in the right context, with the right expectations, I believe that written feedback can provide a unique perspective.
What makes written feedback special is that it most closely imitates the experience of a new reader. Sometimes students provide, in their request form, some background information about the work and their process, but most of the time we just get their assignment instructions and the areas of their writing they’d like feedback on. This means that we, as readers, can’t check with the writer to see if we’re understanding everything that they intended, and we are left to make assumptions and guesses. The disadvantage, of course, is that we sometimes struggle to help our students correct their missteps in the most efficient way possible. We can’t show them the best alternative for their intention if we aren’t sure what their intention was. But we can model the readerly experience for them.
I do this in the margins: “I’m confused by this sentence. Do you mean A or B? If you mean A, consider this: . . If you mean B, consider this: . . . ” This might feel clunky, but I love it. It shows the writer that there is more than one possible interpretation as a natural consequence of what they’ve written, and that without more guidance from them, I might have been led astray. At the same time, I’m able to give them some advice for how to resolve their writing to better capture their intended meaning.
Published July 17, 2018
