Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol. 17, No. 1 (2019)
“I Was Kind of Angry”: Understanding Resistance to Feedback in Two Tutor Education Courses
Julia Bleakney
Elon University
jbleakney@elon.edu
Michael Mattison
Wittenberg University
mmattison@wittenberg.edu
Jennifer Ryan
University of Dayton
jenn.ryan@du.edu
Abstract
This article examines the literature on writer resistance to feedback (Elbow, Sommers, Straub) and presents the results of a study designed to examine how tutors-in-training can develop a greater understanding of that resistance. In this study, we asked students in two writing center education courses at two different schools to provide written feedback on each other’s writing and then followed up with two interviews with selected participants. The exchange invited the tutors-in-training to engage in the challenging experience faced by every writing center client: receiving feedback on their writing. Our purpose was to identify whether this exchange improved the tutors’ ability both to give feedback and to understand how to receive feedback effectively (Stone and Heen). Could engaging in an exchange with tutors-in-training from another school help them appreciate feedback as a problematic form of communication? Does the experience of receiving such feedback—and reflecting on it—influence future tutors’ thinking about their approach to tutoring others? We found that the experience enhanced tutors’ awareness of writers’ resistance to feedback and the need to tailor feedback respectfully and responsively.
What the student writer needs from the tutor is more than simply assistance in figuring out how to say what it is she wants to say; she also needs the affirmation that she had been heard, and not in any vague terms. . . . I didn’t just want help with my writing; I wanted a response to my writing, and I wanted to see how my writing could create a dialogue with others.
Sarah Landis, “The Vulnerable Writer”
What We Know about Feedback
In 1982, Nancy Sommers argued that teachers and researchers of writing “do not know in any definitive way what constitutes thoughtful commentary or what effect, if any, our comments have on helping our students become more effective writers” (148). Thirty-five years later, the field of composition can make a fairly confident claim that we have figured out the first part of Sommers’s concern. In fact, as early as 2006, Melanie Weaver chastised anyone who would plead ignorance: “Some academics appear to lack the knowledge of how to provide effective feedback, but in considering all of the resources available on this subject, it is a rather weak defense” (392). Those resources are grounded in the research of people like Sommers, as well as Richard Straub, who studied student responses to teacher comments and concluded that “students preferred comments that offered direction for improvement but asserted only moderate control over the writing [and] most preferred comments in the form of advice and explanations, since these comments typically are specific, offer directions for revision, and come across as helpful” (112). Time and again, researchers have made similar discoveries, whether in terms of general studies (Chanock; Lizzio and Wilson), or for specific populations, such as L2 writers (Treglia), developmental writers (Calhoon-Dilahunt and Forrest), or for writers receiving electronic feedback (McGrath and Atkinson-Leadbeater).
Quite simply, thoughtful commentary is “honest, specific, and constructive” (Calhoon-Dilahunt and Forrest 233). It gives students the flexibility to make changes but also the reasoning for why the reader is requesting such changes. Teacher comments should ideally “feed-forward,” helping students revise their current work and/or provide advice that will prove beneficial in future assignments (see, for example, Higgins et al. and Duncan). Perhaps the strongest listing of what entails thoughtful commentary comes from Richard Straub and Ronald F. Lunsford, in 1995, when they offered seven “principles for commenting on student texts”:
Teacher comments should be well-developed and text-specific.
They should be focused on global, not local, concerns.
They should emphasize non-authoritative modes of commentary.
They should be carefully thought out and purposeful, with an eye to the needs and potential of the particular piece of writing.
They should be suited to the relative maturity of the draft being read.
They should be mindful of the rhetorical situation for the writing.
They should be adapted to the student writer behind the text. (373)
These principles for written commentary transfer over to face-to-face conferences between students and teachers—as noted by several authors, including Carolyn P. Walker and David Elias and Michele Eodice—and it’s then a small step to writing center conferences. While the tutoring situation is more typically described in terms of dialogue and conversation rather than in terms of feedback, writing center tutors do aim to provide honest, specific, and constructive responses to student writing, and we have our own collection of texts that emphasize such feedback, whether the responses are face-to-face or through written commentary.
However, there is still the second half of Sommers’s claim—the effect such responses have on student writers and their writing. In this area, much remains to be done. Some research has effectively shown that writers do revise their work in response to feedback; for instance, Dana Ferris shows the impact of instructors’ written comments on multilingual students’ revised writing, and Calhoon-Dilahunt and Forrest investigated how writers at a two-year college responded to commentary. Most recently, Darsie Bowden has examined student perceptions of teacher comments; the main purpose of her project, she explains, “was to find out more about what happens between the moment a student receives a comment and the completion of a rough draft, using what students tell us as primary data.” Much of what the students in Bowden’s study said aligned with previous research, confirming that students appreciate “substantive comments [that] invited them into conversations about ideas, texts, readers, and their own subject positions as writers.” However, Bowden also highlights that commentary on writing does not occur in a vacuum, and that the “forces that influenced how students thought about comments and what they did with them went well beyond the classroom.” Home life, technology issues, stress, and other factors can all play a role in how a teacher comment does or does not influence a revised draft.
In the field of writing centers, there is also research on how writers respond to commentary. Byron Stay calculated what types of changes writers made after conferencing with tutors, dividing such changes between surface changes and text-based changes. In addition, Stay calculated the Improvement Ratio (IR) for the papers, measuring the “quality” of the changes (19). The tutors in his study, however, were instructors themselves, and therefore served “in two separate capacities: guide and evaluator” (16). Jessica Williams examined revisions made by multilingual students on their writing, charting the changes made after writing center sessions as well as the quality of the revised essay compared to the original. Though the writers did “considerable revision” and appreciated more direct comments from the tutors, their essays did not show “a substantial improvement,” at least according to the independent graders Williams used (194). Julia Bleakney and Sarah Peterson Pittock also show that feedback offered by tutors in a writing center tutorial led to revisions in student writing. While Bleakney and Pittock do attend to student motivation to revise, none of these studies examine the outside forces that student writers might be dealing with, nor do they specifically consider the resistances students have to the feedback they receive. Williams does allow that “individual sessions have their own interactional features and participants have their own goals” (181), but the writing center session is primarily viewed as an independent entity, with (presumably) the possibility of a one-to-one correspondence between tutor comment and writer revision.
Thus, as a field we have more work to do to understand how students receive, interpret, and (possibly) utilize feedback to change their writing. One thing we know, from our own observations and conversations with writing center tutors, is that regardless of the quality of feedback, writers might not take it. As Bowden claims, “Too often, it seems that, even when we provide students with the types of comments endorsed by experts, students make disappointingly few changes in the final draft.” Peter Elbow explained it this way: “Even when we write clear, accurate, valid, and helpful comments, our students often read them through a distorting lens of resistance or discouragement—or downright denial” (8). Comments do not automatically lead to changes, or improved writing. Richard Higgins et al. argue that “the process of feedback as communication is inherently problematic” (272). They argue that we need to avoid thinking of feedback as “the linear transfer of information” (271)—a message from reader to writer—and instead view it as a “form of communication involving particular social relationships [and] patterns of power, authority, emotion and identity” (273). Bowden has begun to examine those relationships and patterns, as has Omer Hassan Ali Mahfoodh in his article on “university students’ emotional response towards teacher written feedback” (53). Though Mahfoodh focuses on L2 learners (and teacher comments), his article “proposes a theory of emotional responses towards teacher written feedback” and argues for how teachers can and should prepare students to handle those responses (70).
Of course, the conundrum of effective feedback is not a concern unique to writing studies. Several fields have undertaken the task of considering how best to deliver, and receive, it. For instance, in Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well, Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen consider feedback in areas such as business, government, families, and romantic relationships. They argue that our focus should be on educating people on how to receive feedback more than deliver it. After all, “if the receiver isn’t willing or able to absorb the feedback, then there’s only so far persistence or even skillful delivery can go” (5). This sounds just like Elbow’s “distorting lens of resistance.” Stone and Heen recognize the emotional landmines of receiving feedback: “Receiving feedback sits at the intersection of . . . two needs—our drive to learn and our longing for acceptance. These needs run deep, and the tension between them is not going away” (8). On the one hand, we want to learn, to grow from the advice that others give; on the other, we want to be appreciated for who we are, and criticism, even of the constructive kind, chips away at that identity. Yet, Stone and Heen argue, there are immense benefits to receiving feedback well, to “engaging in the conversation skillfully and making thoughtful choices about whether and how to use the information” (8). The authors do not claim that any and all comments should be followed, but rather that comments should provide a reason for possible change and that the receiver should try to understand that reasoning.
For those in writing centers, the relevance of Stone and Heen’s argument should be apparent. Writing center administrators take care to educate tutors on the best means of interacting and communicating with writers, including how to shape feedback that is “honest, specific, and constructive” and still allows the writer to remain in charge of their paper while understanding the context in which they are writing. Administrators also often teach tutors about different types of students—L2 learners, first-generation students, non-traditional students, student athletes—and ask tutors to consider how the differences might affect writing conferences. Some writing center education introduces tutors to the concept of politeness theory, teaching tutors to attend to positive and negative face when delivering feedback, which suggest the need to be aware of how feedback has the potential to offend or be dismissed (see Mackiewicz and Thompson). In short, writing center administrators often focus on what Stephen North called the “verbal and non-verbal wrestling over just how the session[s] should proceed” (436). Tutors need to figure out the writing assignment, the writing context, and the stage of the writing process that the writer is in. There are a host of variables to consider for any writing center session.
But do any of these particulars matter if a student writer takes all of a tutor’s advice through a lens of resistance or discouragement? That’s a troubling question, and one that prompted the authors of this essay to help our writing center tutors-in-training consider how writers resist feedback. We wanted to examine more closely this distorting lens; to do this, we put tutors in the role of writer to help them remember or discover what it is to receive feedback, and we asked them to consider how that feeling might influence or inform their tutoring pedagogy. We wanted, if possible, to capture in our tutor education the immediate, visceral response writers often have to feedback, what Alf Lizzio and Keithia Wilson term the “socioemotional aspects of feedback” (266), and what Stone and Heen believe is “triggered” in certain ways. Could engaging in an exchange with tutors-in-training from another school help them appreciate feedback as a problematic form of communication?
Of course, our population of students for this study constitutes a particular subset of students overall, similar to those described in William Carpenter and Biana Falbo’s work on the “successful” student writer. Like the writing associates they studied, the students in our study “identify themselves and have been identified as highly literate” (93). They too are actively involved in campus activities and have proven themselves capable of surviving, and thriving, in a college environment. In Carpenter and Falbo’s analysis of their students’ literacy narratives, they argue that the students “consider literacy as a problem-solving heuristic, and see themselves as quick-learning problem solvers” (97). Most of the narratives are hero stories in which the author encounters a problem but then overcomes it to achieve success. Tellingly, the authors suggest that “these students' identities as writers are formed first by extrinsic responses to their texts rather than by the content of their texts themselves” (105). In other words, their view has been shaped by the feedback—mostly positive—they have received on their writing. That “materialistic view” of writing is what the tutors-in-training possibly share with other students, but they may have received more favorable responses to their work.
We wanted, therefore, to investigate how the tutors-in-training received feedback from peers and whether or not they would take that experience and use it to inform their approach to working with their peers in a writing center. Thus, our guiding questions for this study were the following:
What do tutors-in-training believe about feedback on writing in general?
How do those tutors-in-training respond to feedback given to a specific piece of their writing by a peer from another institution?
Does the experience of receiving such feedback—and reflecting on it—influence their thinking about their approach to tutoring others?
Context of Study, Data Collection, and Analysis
In the spring of 2018, students in two writing center education courses (n=17 in one and n=13 in the other) at Wittenberg University and Elon University completed an assignment in which they exchanged papers and then provided written feedback on those papers; the papers also included a cover note from the writer, explaining what questions they had about their paper and what they would like their responder to focus on. As students in the course, they were required to complete the assignment. However, after securing IRB exemption, we invited the students to voluntarily participate in a research study to examine how this assignment might help them understand the challenges writers face when receiving feedback. Across both courses, all but one student volunteered to participate by submitting their written materials for analysis; these materials included a pre-assignment survey, written feedback on a paper written by a student in the other course, a revision plan, and a reflection memo. The pre-assignment survey was designed to capture the participants’ attitudes toward, and prior experience with, receiving and responding to feedback; the revision plan prompted them to explain in detail what feedback they received, how they planned to use the feedback, and what revisions they planned to make to their papers; and the reflection memo, completed at the very end of the assignment, invited them to reflect on their experiences throughout the assignment and their perception of learning (see Appendix A).
As the assignment was wrapping up in the courses, we invited the students to be interviewed. At each institution, one student researcher—a tutor¹ but not one in the course—interviewed participants twice. Five students in the Elon course and six students in the Wittenberg course agreed to participate in this step. The first interview was conducted right after the assignment had been completed and the second interview was conducted toward the end of the semester, after the participants had a few weeks of practice consulting in the writing center. In the first interview, our goal was to capture the participants’ reactions to the feedback they received, how the feedback they received compared to the feedback they gave, how they responded to the suggestions as they revised their writing, and how this exercise might translate into their writing center practice. In the second interview, we asked the participants to recall what they remembered about giving and receiving feedback and we also asked them to reflect on any insights they might have about how this experience informed their writing center consulting practice. The interviews lasted between 6 ½ and 27 minutes; this time range suggests variation in how well the interviewers were able to push the participant to elaborate on their ideas and how well the participants were able to reflect on their processes and explain their experiences (see Appendix B).²
To analyze the interviews, we first transcribed them using the software program TRINT. The two student researchers then listened to the original audios and corrected the transcripts, identifying preliminary themes as they listened. Working off the initial themes, the two writing center directors then coded the interviews using an emergent, holistic process to identify and refine broad patterns and additional themes across the interviews. Through continual dialogue, the directors reached consensus over the patterns and themes.
Though we collected all the writing components of this assignment, we focus our analysis in this article on the materials that capture the participants’ beliefs about and attitudes toward feedback: the pre-assignment questionnaire, the reflection memo, and the interviews. We chose not to focus on the revision plan or the revisions the tutors made to their own writing as these materials are worthy of a separate study. Approaching our analysis of the collected data, our primary goals were to gauge the students’ beliefs about feedback as well as their response to receiving feedback and then to understand if having the experience of both giving and receiving feedback through a class assignment—and with strangers—would develop their awareness of the challenges writing center clients might have to receiving feedback; in other words, does the experience of giving and especially receiving feedback influence how they think about working with writing center clients?
To analyze the pre-assignment survey responses, we focused on the following two questions that we felt would enrich our analysis of the interviews: How do you usually feel when you receive feedback on your writing? How do you think most writers feel about receiving feedback? (Other questions in the survey were geared more directly toward the class activity.) To understand which perceptions dominated, we coded the responses by highlighting and counting key descriptors that the tutors used to capture their feelings.
What stood out the most in the responses was that a majority of the 28 tutors who completed the surveys believed themselves better about receiving and utilizing feedback than writers in general. They answered the first question in positive terms while answering the second in negative ones. For example, one tutor wrote about her response to feedback:
I’m excited. I love being judged (as strange as that sounds). I like hearing what people think about my writing and taking their reactions into consideration so I can make it better.
However, she believes other writers “are nervous and feel vulnerable.
Another tutor said he was “thankful” for feedback but believed other writers “defensive.” A third said that she tries to take the feedback “and learn from it rather than get discouraged.” Yet, other writers “are not huge fans of feedback [because they] think their work is perfect and another person’s perspective won’t matter.” Time and again the tutors positioned themselves as willing recipients of feedback and other writers as troubled by the process. One tutor did give brief, negative responses to both questions— “Nervous” and “The same way, anxious”—putting herself and other writers in the same boat. A couple of others gave primarily positive responses to both questions, believing that all writers appreciate and even welcome feedback: “I am sure most are happy.”
In sum, a few of the tutors felt that others mimicked their feelings about feedback, but the majority believed they surpassed others in their appreciation for feedback. The distinction can be further highlighted with the word clouds in Appendix C, created from the key descriptor words in the tutors’ responses. The tutors who made such a distinction between their own and others’ responses to feedback usually had the most detailed answers; in contrast, when a tutor believed feedback was either positive or negative for all writers, the responses tended to be short. For some of the tutors, the appreciation they had for feedback was hard-won. They had to overcome initial feelings of fear or anger, and as they grew as writers, they grew better at accepting feedback. One tutor explained, “Over the past year I have gotten more confident in my writing, because I realized that it is a process. I enjoy feedback because it allows me to get another person’s perspective.” Another worked through several possibilities for her reaction to feedback:
I am usually responsive to what is suggested and when I do not agree, I try to see why that feedback was given. Very rarely do comments make me angry though sometimes, if I receive a plethora of negative responses, I can lose quite a bit of motivation to continue on for a short period of time.
Another captured all sides of the process:
There is an exciting rush of emotion when receiving feedback. You feel excited, defensive, and scared all at once. I am always interested to see how others will react to my writing but also nervous in sharing something so personal.
These tutors’ descriptions, again, contrast with their beliefs about other writers’ responses to feedback. In one of the more interesting comments, the tutor begins by suggesting writers may respond positively or negatively to feedback, but then both of the examples are negative:
I believe [response to feedback] depends largely on the writer and their level of confidence in their own ability. I could see an inexperienced writer being afraid of having their work closely analyzed. I could also see an experienced writer growing defensive in regards to a critique.
Here, the experience of the writer does not really matter in terms of utilizing feedback, as the response has changed from fear to defensiveness, neither of which will presumably prove conducive to revision. In many ways, the tutors seem to be describing Elbow’s “distorting lens of resistance or discouragement—or downright denial” (8).
Perhaps it is not surprising that those who are drawn to work as writing tutors believe themselves more practiced in receiving feedback. They talk about writing as a process, a give-and-take of writer and reader, as they have been learning about in the courses. They also position other writers as in need of assistance, perhaps in part to justify the work they will be undertaking. Like the students in Carpenter and Falbo’s study, the tutors-in-training view themselves as “informed and intelligent readers who help students formulate tough questions about their own writing” (93). If the writers are defensive, scared, nervous, anxious, or vulnerable, then the writing tutor can prove to be an important asset, calming emotional distress as well as offering rhetorical advice. These explanations, though, are theoretical. Did the tutors in fact maintain their own positive outlook on feedback when receiving comments on their drafts from the students in the other course? This is what we aimed to discover through the interviews.
Turning to the interviews, we noticed that the tutors appreciated feedback that displayed the qualities we describe at the beginning of this essay—honest, specific, and constructive. They also often found their peers’ comments to be just that. For example, Hala (a pseudonym; we use pseudonyms throughout) said,
I thought [the response] was pretty helpful—when I work with another writer or you get feedback from someone you can tell what their focus is when they’re writing, which I think was interesting.
She also felt that she and her responder aligned well:
We definitely have similar views when it comes to analyzing papers . . . . I mean I was never like ‘I disagree with this.’ I think all of it was helpful and I was open to her suggestions.
Dante complimented the responder on balancing his comments: “I think he did a really good job of not going overboard but at the same time really helping me out.” There were certainly moments when the tutors did display the open-mindedness that they claimed to have in the survey.
Yet the interviews also showed that the tutors’ reactions to feedback were not straightforward: open-mindedness does not always come easily. Complex emotions run through their answers; there were several moments of resistance, many of which were overcome, and also an instance or two of rejection. Sometimes the resistance to feedback was a generic one, an initial feeling that the tutor moved beyond. For example, Adrian said,
I always get really anxious just whenever I’m in this kind of situation because I definitely hate being critiqued. . . then like when I was reading through, I was like super involved, like I was really digging into what she was saying and it was actually really helpful.
Similarly, Troy mentioned, “At the beginning you’re a little defensive and then you start reading a little farther in and then you’re like, OK, I understand.” Meanwhile, Kelsey believed her paper rather good to begin with, so she dealt with the surprise of having critical comments:
I got a good grade on it so I was a little shocked that I saw a lot of comments so initially I thought, ‘Wow, maybe this wasn’t as good as I thought it was.’
She even admitted that she “was kind of angry.” She did, though, read the comments and found them helpful: “The more I read it . . . I realized that I agreed with what she was saying.” Oona, on the other hand, was more overwhelmed at the sheer amount of comments:
Every single paragraph had at least one small comment and then a synopsis of the entire paragraph and then why she commented [on] things, which was helpful but it was also very overwhelming.
Oona termed this “very meticulous feedback,” but she also claimed she did not have an emotional response to it because she was not “super emotionally attached to the paper.”
A few of the tutors had stronger reactions, albeit for different reasons. Violet, for example, was disappointed that her responder went out of her way to compliment her writing:
[She] was happy go lucky almost. She was like, oh, this is all so great. I’m just nitpicking little things because I love so much stuff in your paper and this is such a good point here and like smiling emojis next to every response.
Violet would have preferred less of the “fluff stuff” and more direct comments on her writing, as she had requested in her cover note. As she said, “you don’t have to do this, just give me the feedback.” Kenzie also wished for more critical comments on her paper, as she did not think it was her strongest work: “[B]eing a little more critical I think would have helped because in my opinion this paper wasn’t the greatest paper.” Her responder, though, in Kenzie’s view, focused more on sentence-level issues and did not tackle the “large comments” that Kenzie had asked for: “[S]he never really said too much about the actual comment that I asked about.” Kenzie also disagreed with the responder on certain points. For instance, the responder asked for “more about the specific authors of the sources,” but Kenzie found that information irrelevant to the paper. She was also dealing with a word count, so she believed she could not add in that information due to space constraints. In her mind, she told the responder, “You keep bringing this up and I don’t really think that’s too valid.” In both cases, the writers felt as if the tutors did not completely listen to them; they overlooked the requests the writers made—Violet’s for direct commentary, Kenzie’s for comments on the quality of her support and persuasion—and caused the writers to push back against the feedback.
Another tutor, Gloria, was not completely happy with the feedback she received, in part due to what she found was a lack of positive comments: “She didn't really say anything positive which wasn’t bad but then I was kind of like, aw, this kind of sucks; it’s a lot of changes.” Also, the tutor had displayed a particular quirk that struck Gloria as off-putting, even though the commentary overall was focused on the areas she had asked for in her cover letter:
I did ask about the research feedback so I kind of expected that and I was really happy that she gave me qualitative feedback. I was a little bit annoyed with how much she hated the word ‘that’ though because it was like every other sentence.
Gloria got hung up on the idea that her reader hated a word she used, seeing that as a personal preference of the reader, but one that colored her whole experience as a writer receiving feedback. Interestingly, Gloria was one of the tutors who believed that she gave better feedback than she received: “I feel like I gave a lot more diverse feedback.” Her description of her feedback, though, centers mostly on issues of punctuation and capitalization.
We mine these explanations from the tutors—students themselves—because we believe they tap into some of the reasons that students might see feedback in a writing center through a lens of distortion. If the feedback seems esoteric or random, it’s easy to resist; if the student has anxiety about their writing, it’s easy to become discouraged; if the feedback does not appear to align with the assignment criteria, it’s easy to deny the tutor credibility. Yet, because the tutors believe themselves better at receiving feedback than other student writers (and as we discuss below, sometimes believe they provide better feedback than they receive), the difficulty of assessing and accepting feedback may be that much more challenging for the students they work with. We also believe these responses illustrate some of the triggers that Stone and Heen describe as barriers to engaging in productive discussions involving feedback.
For Stone and Heen, there are three triggers: truth, relationship, and identity. Truth triggers “are set off by the substance of the feedback itself—it’s somehow off, unhelpful, or simply untrue” (16). In these cases, the recipient disagrees with what is being said, much like Kenzie did when her responder kept asking her to include information about the authors she was citing. That information, for Kenzie, was irrelevant and added to a word count she couldn’t break. Her response to the tutor: “You keep bringing this up and I don't really think that’s too valid.” The validity, or truth, of the comment is questioned. Next are relationship triggers, which are “tripped by the particular person who is giving us this gift of feedback” (16). The focus shifts from what is being said to who is saying it. The tutors in the two classes had not met before, which may have contributed to preconceived ideas about their responder. For instance, Gloria had a negative image of her responder, based on the tutor’s dislike of the word “that.” The tutor kept asking Gloria to include a referent when using the pronoun, and Gloria questioned the advice, and the giver: “She hated ‘that.’ She’d be like, you need to always say what it was even though I just said [it], and that drove me crazy.” Gloria also said, “I was a little bit annoyed with how much she hated the word ‘that’ because it was like every other sentence.” This complaint seems not so much in disagreement with the advice, but is questioning more the type of person who could be so focused on this point.
Stone and Heen’s third trigger is identity, and that trigger, when tripped, causes “our identity—our sense of who we are—to come undone.” We are “unsure what to think about ourselves, and question what we stand for” (17). We hear something close to that in Kelsey’s reaction to the number of comments on her paper: “I got a good grade on it so I was a little shocked . . . . initially I thought, wow, maybe this wasn’t as good as I thought it was.” By extension, Kelsey might also be wondering about her abilities as a writer. Or, as Makenna pointed out, some comments that ask for changes in the argument of an essay or its structure lead directly to a writer’s identity: “I think that’s harder to let go of because it’s something you wrote and people feel connected to what they’re writing.” As Carpenter and Falbo discovered with their students, “success (or lack thereof) in school and, more specifically, in academic writing often serves as the foundation for writerly identities” (106). The responses that Kelsey and Makenna received seem to have triggered questions for them about their identities as writers.
However, in our reading of the interviews, other examples of identity triggers were hard to find. The foundations for the students’ writerly identities are solid; their responses were more indicative of the veteran writing associates from Carpenter and Falbo’s work, who were complicating their identities as writers by focusing less on extrinsic responses to their writing and more on their own intrinsic responses to their questions and concerns within the composing process. (106)
Yet, even with a strong writerly identity, some of our tutors-in-training did have a negative response to the feedback, triggered by truth and relationships. They questioned the validity of some of the comments they received, and they questioned the people giving them. In their eyes, some of their readers did not understand the assignment, or the topic, or the genre. For example, Gloria questioned if her responder knew as much about economics as she should:
Sometimes I kind of assume everyone’s on the same level of like economics. . . as me. A lot of people aren’t so I did a lot of. . . like I don’t want to say dumbing down. . . a lot of people don’t know the principles of supply and demand which is like you know fundamental economics for a business student.
Gloria had already written for a general audience, but her tutor still did not understand.
Again, if successful students such as these tutors-in-training, who are in classes designed to discuss feedback, find some difficulty in receiving feedback, it stands to reason that other students will have at least the same difficulty. Those are the students the tutors will be talking with, so does the experience of receiving feedback themselves prepare the tutors to work with those students? Do they believe their tutoring practices will be influenced by the experience of this assignment? In short, we believe yes. The tutors-in-training as a whole believed this experience valuable. They also believed that this essay exchange and practice preparing written feedback had implications for face-to-face tutoring. One implication that cross-cuts written and in-person tutoring is the need to consider the writer’s perspective. As Hala said of the assignment, “I guess it does make you put yourself in the client’s shoes . . . I’m very conscious of it now.” Most of the tutors would make changes in how they tutor based on their experiences in this assignment. In the second interview, conducted after the tutors had had a few weeks of practice in the writing center, the two main themes that arose were time and tone. The tutors talked about taking the time to get to know the writer and the assignment; and they talked of how they needed to pay attention to the tone of their comments, either written or spoken.
Some of the tutors mentioned that they wanted to learn more about a writer and an assignment at the start of the session, and they also wanted to establish a comfortable space for the writer. As Adrian said, “I definitely need to take a moment to realize that, like, all people that come in are probably going to be really nervous like I am.” Because of those nerves, she wants to let the writer know that we can do this together, it's going to be better for you as the writer to get this feedback because. . . you're going to finally like hopefully something's going to click.
Makenna thought this assignment helped her feel less like a “hypocrite” when she gives advice, and she said it’s “important to understand your client. . . to know how they’re feeling when you say certain things.” Are you challenging something they feel strongly about? Kelsey now wants to be “more understanding and ask more questions to get the full background” from the writer about the assignment. The tutors also talked about prioritizing the writer’s interests; this sentiment was expressed by the tutors who thought their responders did not focus on what they asked for. Kenzie said her biggest takeaway from this exchange was “staying focused on what [the writer] wants [and] trying not to go too far off from what they are asking.” A tutor can add in other comments or topics, but only after addressing what the writer wanted to talk about.
Much of this advice no doubt sounds familiar to writing center administrators, as it echoes what our literature and our pedagogy emphasizes: taking time up front to talk with writers and gain a sense of the writing context. Steve Sherwood and Christina Murphy term the opening phase of a session the “pre-textual stage” and note that here, “tutor and student begin the process of developing the interpersonal relationship that will guide their collaborations” (11). To establish such a relationship, the tutor must respond to various personality and learning styles and be sensitive to differences in gender, age, ethnicity, cultural and educational backgrounds, and attitudes towards writing. (11)
Thomas Newkirk has examined the first five minutes of student-teacher writing conferences, and both William Macauley (“Setting the Agenda”) and Michael Mattison (“The First 150 Seconds”) have built on that idea to stress the initial moments of a writing center session in order to make the session as productive, and student-centered, as possible. While these concepts are introduced to the students in both courses through readings and discussions, the exchange assignment helped put the concepts into action for the students. It’s one thing to read about prioritizing a writer’s interests, but another to be the writer and feel what it is like to have your interests delayed, misunderstood, or ignored.
The other main lesson learned from the assignment concerned the phrasing of feedback. Some tutors were quite cognizant of the tone of comments because of their experience receiving feedback from their peers. Troy said it simply:
[C]omments can kind of like elicit an emotional response in a writer when they review their paper. I feel like it's important to, phrasing is important in when you deliver comments to people.
Hala spoke of how she would aim for “more sensitive feedback” given her experience: “[O]ne of my worries is someone will come in with something that's very like socially or ethically sensitive and I'll say something like I didn't have time to think about and maybe it wasn't intended the right way.” She now thinks about taking more time with her comments. And Dante also mentioned the possibility of being more careful with how he writes his response: “I think just looking at it since he's not hearing my voice he's just looking at my comments maybe phrase them in a little more positive cheerful way.” Oona emphasized the same: “I would say that the way that things are phrased and the tone of voice used, even in written comments in the way those come across is one of the most important aspects of our peer tutoring.” Yet there’s also a balance to be maintained, as Monica mentions: “I just remember being, like, not overly nice but just like very complimentative before I gave the, like, criticism.” It is possible to be too nice at times, or to offer too much “fluff,” as Violet indicated in her analysis of her feedback. Then again, Troy argues, “You can always be nicer in the world. I guess I could have been nicer.”
Talk about the phrasing of comments to student writers should also be familiar to those in writing centers, although we do not have as much literature on tone as on time. We do talk about direct instruction and cognitive/motivational scaffolding as well as politeness (Mackiewicz and Thompson) and mitigating language (Mackiewicz and Thompson; Thonus). Yet again, this assignment seems to have given the tutors a closer look at what it means to choose their words carefully so as to best support and encourage a writer. However, not every tutor believed the assignment made them reconsider their delivery. Violet, for example:
I learned that maybe I shouldn't worry so much about the delivery of the feedback. I got feedback that had a delivery I was trying to stay away from when I was crafting my comments for other papers. I was unfazed by what I received. So I concluded that it's not as crucial as I had thought it to be.
Even with this response, though, Violet realizes that not every writer would agree: “However, I do know that not everyone has the same perspective as me, when it comes to feedback.” Overall, every tutor interviewed believed that the assignment gave them some adjustment to make in their tutoring practice.
Conclusion: Lessons Learned
We wanted to know what tutors-in-training thought about feedback in general, how they responded to specific feedback on a piece of their own writing, and whether or not that experience would influence their thinking about tutoring pedagogy. We did notice a slight discrepancy between the beliefs tutors espoused about how well they accepted feedback and their responses to an actual instance of feedback, but that discrepancy reinforces Higgins, Hartley, and Skelton’s claim about feedback being “inherently problematic” (272). There is a complex set of emotions involved in receiving feedback, and the tutors’ responses showcased just that; even practiced writers can become anxious and defensive when facing comments about their work. Yet that experience—receiving a response to a piece of writing—also seemed to prove beneficial in that it allowed tutors to reflect on how the writers they work with might feel about receiving comments on their writing.
What the tutors claimed to have learned from the experience aligns with what writing center literature has advocated, as well as what the field of composition has argued for since Sommers first asked about thoughtful commentary: feedback should be geared towards the needs of the writer and the assignment and should be thoughtful, specific, and honest. To understand the writer’s needs and the assignment itself, tutors need to listen carefully and prompt a writer with questions (in face-to-face sessions) or read carefully (in asynchronous written feedback) to garner as many details as possible. That care helps the tutors tailor their comments to the situation. Although it is acceptable to give comments on additional aspects noticed throughout the paper, the main priority is focusing on what the writers themselves asked for. Then, as we know from Sommers and Straub and Lunsford, when giving feedback, tutors need to be specific in their comments; simply saying “good” for praise isn’t enough, or writing “fragment” might not always be enough either. Comments need elaboration to be of most use. Tutors also need to take care to balance praise and criticism, and make sure that they respect the writer. Otherwise, tutors run the risk of the writers being more resistant to the feedback. This was true for the tutors at Wittenberg, who conduct asynchronous email sessions; one practice that seemed to stand out for them was an introductory comment at the beginning of an email response, a comment that restates what the writer wanted to focus on and explains how the commenting process will work (marginal comments followed by an endnote). The tutors thought this opening note even more important after this assignment as it established the tutor-writer relationship and could possibly reduce a writer’s anxiety. At the same time, lessons learned from the activity of giving and receiving written feedback transferred to the synchronous, face-to-face sessions conducted by Elon’s writing tutors. Appreciating the different contexts, the tutors noted the implications of the written feedback activity to their in-person practice, particularly related to appropriate tone when offering suggestions and feedback.
This experience also helped the administrators understand that teaching how to deliver feedback is not enough; we need to teach how to receive feedback and then encourage transfer between the tutors’ own reception of feedback and their understanding of how others receive feedback. Reflective writing is one way to encourage transfer, as it helps tutors acknowledge how difficult receiving feedback can be. In addition, we should continue to emphasize the pre-textual stage as described by Sherwood and Murphy. The connection made between writer and tutor is important, as is the tutor’s attempt to understand what works best for the writer and what expectations they have for the feedback; to do this, we can utilize works from Macauley, Newkirk, and Mattison. And we need to talk about how to ask questions, and what questions to ask. Some of the triggers can possibly be defused before the textual stage if the tutor is willing to ask questions and listen. They can help prepare the writer to receive feedback. Yet, as helpful as readings and conversations can be, they do not always convey in a visceral way what it means to be a writer receiving feedback from a peer. This assignment did. We believe the tutors gained a level of understanding about the writer-tutor relationship that will benefit them moving forward.
Some of the lessons learned might be beyond the scope of the writing center to provide once the course has ended. For instance, the tutors spoke of how they appreciated the feedback they received more after some time had passed. The five-week gap between interviews allowed them the space and time to appreciate the comments they received. When pushed to think back, their views were generally more positive at that point and they were more willing and more open to the comments that their tutor had given them. Given enough time between receiving comments, more tutors realized the comments were more helpful than they originally thought. Ideally all writers would allow themselves time to receive and digest feedback on a piece of writing, but that rarely seems to be the case. Certainly few if any student writers have the opportunity to plan out a five-week window in which to receive comments, think them over, and then decide whether or not to utilize the advice. But, advocating for more time in a writer’s process is something that tutors can do in their conversations with writers, and writing center administrators can do the same with faculty colleagues. Getting feedback early is crucial in order for a writer to have the time to understand and possibly utilize those comments.
Perhaps the most telling lessons of this assignment were also the most obvious: receiving feedback is hard—and it is a learned experience. When the tutors talk about appreciating feedback, it is often with an understanding that they have arrived at that position, and that they worked to get there. As Stone and Heen argue, “if the receiver isn’t willing or able to absorb the feedback, then there’s only so far persistence or even skillful delivery can go” (5). The tutors can be persistent, and they can continually work to become more skillful in their delivery of comments. They may also now be more adept at reading writers and their circumstances, which in turn might allow them to help writers clear the “lens of distortion” and see more clearly the possibilities for their papers.
Notes
At Elon University the peer workers in the Writing Center are known as “consultants” and at Wittenberg University they are “advisors,” but this article uses the common term “tutors” for all.
The authors wish to recognize Madeleine McCarthy at Elon University for her extensive assistance with the interviews.
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Appendix A
Pre-Assignment Survey
1. Describe the types of feedback you’ve received on your writing previously, academic or otherwise. Feedback includes oral comments or written comments directly on your writing or in rubric sheets, etc.
2. What type or form of feedback do you prefer? Why?
3. What type of form of feedback do you least prefer? Why?
4. What is the best response you’ve ever received to your writing, and why do you believe it the best?
5. What is the worst response you’ve ever received to your writing, and why do you believe it the worst?
6. How do you usually feel when you receive feedback on your writing?
7. How do you think most writers feel about receiving feedback?
8. How often do you revise your writing based on feedback you’ve received?
All the time
The majority of the time
About half of the time
Some times
Rarely
9. What percentage of feedback do you normally utilize and apply, either to the writing under review or to future writing?
100%
75-99%
50-74%
25-49%
Less than 25%
Anything else you’d like to add?
Revision Plan
1. What is the assignment/ prompt? (You can copy and paste this from previous notes)
2. What feedback and suggestions did you receive from your Elon/Wittenberg peer? Please be detailed.
3. What feedback and suggestions did you receive from your class peer? Please provide a detailed summary of the main suggestions you received.
4. Which suggestions are you planning to work on as you revise your writing, and why?
5. Which suggestions from either of your peers are you not planning to work on? Please explain why you do not plan to address these suggestions. (For instance, if a piece of feedback doesn’t seem relevant to you, say why.)
6. What additional revisions, not discussed with your peers, are you planning on tackling?
Reflection Memo
What did you learn about your own writing by completing this exchange assignment?
What did you learn about crafting and delivering feedback by READING AND COMMENTING on the exchange essay?
What did you learn about crafting and delivering feedback by RECEIVING comments from your exchange reader?
What did you learn about crafting and delivering feedback from giving and receiving feedback from your classmate on this draft? (Peer sessions in either Wittenberg’s English 242 or Elon’s English 319)
How satisfied are you with your revision plans?
1: Not at all satisfied
2
3
4
5: Extremely Satisfied
Any other comments?
Appendix B
First Interview (done right after assignment is completed)
Purpose of interview:
Capture their perspectives about learning to deliver feedback and about being a recipient of feedback
Capture their attitudes about giving and receiving feedback
First interview questions:
1. Please describe the feedback you received from Elon/Wittenberg?
—Follow up: what comments did they make on your writing? What aspects of your writing did they comment on?
***what exactly the feedback was (examples of what they said instead of evaluative comments)
2. Describe your initial reaction when you first read the response from /Elon/Wittenberg? *emotional response
—How did you initially feel about the feedback you were given: were there pieces of feedback that you more open to? Were there pieces of feedback that you were more resistant to? Or anything else?
3. Now that you have completed the assignment, have your thoughts about that response changed since that time? (If so, in what way? And why did you/do you think?)
4. What revisions did you actually make? Why? And why didn’t you choose to incorporate other pieces of feedback?
5. Please describe the feedback you wrote on the Elon/Wittenberg paper.
6. How does the feedback you received compare to the feedback you gave, as you recall?
7. In what way would your consulting/advising comments be the same or different if the session was face-to-face?
8. In what way, if any, has this experience of receiving feedback informed your practice as a WC consultant/advisor?
9. In what way, if any, has this experience of giving feedback informed your practice as a WC consultant/advisor?
10. What, if anything, might you do differently as a writing consultant/advisor given this exchange experience?
Second Interview (done at the end of semester)
Purpose of interview:
Capture their reflections/ perspectives on how much they used/ relied on the assignment experience as they continued to work in the WC through the semester
Capture their attitudes about giving and receiving feedback
1. What do you remember about the feedback you received from Elon/Wittenberg at the beginning of the semester?
— Review feedback and ask them what was most impactful
2. Do you remember how you felt about this feedback? If so, how do you recall feeling? How do you feel about it now?
3. What comment do you remember the most? Or, what is one word you would use to summarize the response?
4. What insights do you have from the client/advisor’s perspective as a recipient of feedback from this experience?
5. Since this assignment, have you used any insights or experiences to inform your writing center consulting practice? If so, please explain how so. If not, please explain why not.
— Give me an example.
6. What do you remember about the feedback you gave to your Elon/Wittenberg counterpart?
— Review feedback and ask them if they would do anything differently now
Appendix C
Figure 1
Word Clouds
Tutors’ responses to feedback (left) and their view of general writers’ responses (right).The larger the word in the cloud, the more frequently it occurred in their responses.