In this class, I ask you to request your feedback rather than just telling you every thought that I have about your paper. I do this, in part, because I want you to “take ownership of your work and gain an understanding of your voice, style, and strengths,” since this is one of the goals of English 110. I also do this because becoming a better self-editor of your work is critical to becoming a more effective writer.

Below, I have given you some ideas about what you can ask for when you request feedback on an assignment. You can also feel free to develop your own questions.

Each person is different, but it’s a good idea to start with “global feedback” in your earlier drafts and to request things from the “local feedback” category as the unit progresses and after you’ve had the chance to better develop your ideas.

Global Feedback, Unit 1

Here are some global or “big picture” things you might ask for drafts in Unit 1.

• The connection between your claims and your examples: Ask me if the claim(s) you’ve chosen are well-supported by your examples, or if I understand the connections that you’re making.
  
• Your evidence: Ask me if I think your evidence is effectively supporting the point that you say that you’re making. Ask me if you have used enough evidence.
  
• Your development and analysis: Ask me if there are any ideas in your paper that I feel could use some more explanation or “unpacking,” or if there are places where it feels like you’re rushing to get to the next point. Ask me if I think that your analysis is explaining your evidence.
  
• Your transitions: Ask me if I think there are clear connections between the previous idea and the next one (in a whole paper), or between things like your claims, your evidence, and your analysis (within a paragraph or section).
  
• Repetition: Ask me if I think there are any places where you’re repeating yourself. This tends to happen a lot in early drafts when you’re still developing your ideas!

Global Feedback, Units 2 and 3

Here are some additional questions that can come up in the assignments in Unit 2 and 3.

• Your understanding of the genre: An Annotated Bibliography or a Literature Review might be brand new to you. If it is, you might want to ask me about whether your draft is following the typical conventions of this genre and where it departs from them.
  
• Your organization: Ask me to tell you what I am noticing about how your ideas fit together throughout a particular annotated bibliography entry, or within a specific section of your literature review. Do I think that the ideas build on one another pretty smoothly? Do I understand the connections that you’re making within or between your paragraphs? Or do you have a draft that is basically several mini papers that are loosely connected? 
  
• Your evidence: If you are using secondary sources to support a point, ask me if I think you used just the amount that you actually need to make your case. Ask me about whether you’re using paraphrases effectively, or synthesizing sources (i.e. bringing multiple sources together). Ask me if I think that your evidence is CRAAP-test approved, or scholarly. And / or ask me if I think your evidence is effectively supporting the point that you say that you’re making.

Local Feedback for All Units

It’s good to ask for this kind of feedback when you’re confident about your organization, your idea development, your transitions, etc. Asking for this feedback too early can be counterproductive.

• Your paragraphs: Ask me if I think that your paragraphs are too long or too short, or additional places where I could see you splitting them up or adding more.
  
• Your sentence structure: Ask if you have good “sentence variation,” or if I’m noticing that all or most of your sentences start in the same way (e.g. The author says X. He says Y. He also says Z.) Ask about whether it seems like all or most of your sentences are roughly the same length, which can lead to your writing feeling kind of boring. Ask if there paragraphs or larger sections where you might vary your sentence structure to give it some more interest.
  
• Word choices: Ask about whether there any word choices that you’re making that are confusing or distracting to me as a reader (and make sure to consider whether *I* am your ultimate reader for this particular assignment, and whether other readers might feel the same — remember, I’m just one person!) Ask whether your language seems precise (i.e. you’re describing something in a really specific way rather than relying on a cliche), or if your language is too vague / broad? Ask if I’m noticing if you using the same word over and over again, or if there are any words that stand out to me in any other way.
  
• Punctuation choices: Ask if I think you’re using punctuation in conventional or unconventional ways (this might be things like comma splices, run-on sentence, sentence fragments, apostrophes in the wrong place, etc.)? How do I think that this impacts the style of the piece?
  
• Misc. style: Is there anything else about your style that I’m finding noteworthy (really interesting, really distracting, or just otherwise worthy of note?)

Grammar Feedback for All Units

Are there any patterns of grammatical choices that are unfamiliar to me as a reader? Or is there a grammatical component of your piece that makes it difficult for me to understand your meaning? Doing the reading for this class will show you why I am uncomfortable “correcting” every “mistake” in your work. But this kind of feedback can give you some information about differences that I notice, and then you can make choices about what to do with those differences. 

MLA Style and Citation Incorporation Feedback: For Assignments 2 and 3

I will automatically give you some MLA style and citation feedback on some of your major assignments as part of meeting the minimum requirements. However, on other assignments where it’s not required, you might want to practice it anyway. This will be especially useful to you if you plan to take other courses in the humanities (where MLA style is often required). You could ask for things like:

• Source incorporation: Are you incorporating secondary sources into your text in a way that conforms to MLA standards (i.e. you have correctly formatted block quotes, direct quotes, paraphrases, etc.)?
  
• Plagiarism avoidance: Did you sufficiently summarize or paraphrase something to avoid accusations of plagiarism? Are you using too much of the author’s original language or sentence structure?
  
• Works Cited list: Did you correctly format the citations in MLA for your Works Cited list at the end of the paper?
  
• Misc. MLA: Did you do all of the other things you’re supposed to do to meet MLA formatting guidelines (i.e. Heading is correct, title and subheadings are correct, font size, spacing, page numbers, etc.)

Resources / Additional Info Feedback 

If you request this kind of feedback, I will primarily concentrate on pointing you in the direction of additional resources and information from the field of Writing Studies that relates to your writing. This is a good type of feedback to ask for if you’re interested in this topic and you want to (now or later) do more reading or thinking about it.

Tell Me Something Good About Myself! 

A lot of writing instruction is premised on the idea that we are deficient writers with deficient writing that needs serious work. This means that many of us don’t develop a sense about what is GOOD about our writing. We only learn to see the problems. If you request this kind of feedback, I will concentrate on where I see the biggest strengths in your writing.