[owl hoot sound effect]
Hello everyone I'm Kim, I'm Sung Ae, [I'm] Curtis.
Thank you all so much for joining us
today for our workshop on incorporating
feedback on scholarly writing. The
purpose of the presentation is to help
you strengthen your writing through
providing strategies for responding to
feedback and evaluating suggestions that
you're given. This presentation is also
for those who have already solicited
feedback from faculty, peers, or journals
and need an efficient method for sifting
through the suggestions or comments that
you're given. So before we offer
suggestions on how to address the
feedback you're given, we're going to
reflect on the different types of
feedback that exist. And I do not
believe that this is an exhaustive list,
but the general forms of feedback
typically fall within these broad
categories. So the very first type of
feedback we have is corrective feedback,
and this identifies an action or an
approach that should be rectified and
likely not repeated again. And this could
be a suggestion to change the method of
your research or the approach to your
topic so that it is more concise for
your audience. The second type of
feedback that we have is directive
feedback, and this is more of an
instruction and it tells you what you
need to do. For example a comment might
say you need to add the author of the
source in your in-text citation—that is
a directive. The third type of feedback
is interactive feedback, and this
encourages dialogue and deliberation.
Oftentimes we've asked a question such
as, have you ever considered XYZ, and it
seeks to gain your perspective and learn
your intention for making the choices
that you did in your writing. And the
last type of feedback we have is evaluative
feedback, and this comments on your
overall process, and letter grades are
considered to be evaluative feedback. The
comments such as you're well on your way
or you're doing an excellent job is
also evaluative feedback. So also before
diving into the comments you have
received, you want to think about the
type of feedback you asked for from your
advisor, your colleague, or whoever else
is serving as your writing
accountability, and this will help you to
prioritize the feedback that you have
received and make your focus much more
specific during your revision process.
You want to keep in mind that every
reviewer, whether from your discipline or
not, offers suggestions for changes based
on their own experiences and knowledge,
and knowing this influences how you
receive and make use of the feedback
that you're given. On a similar note many
of us determine the topic of our
writing according to our personal
passions and interests. As such we can
have a connection to the work that
prevents us from seeing the benefits of
an outsider's perspective. However like
the last point suggests, remember that
everyone has something to contribute as
a result of their acquired knowledge and
experiences. And lastly, as you approach
your feedback, make plans to categorize
the comments you have received based on
its focus and Curtis will share more
about what those focal points could look
like and why they are essential. Right so
now we're talking about these different
feedback focal points and what we have
here is a list that is organized from
the global to local concerns, so those
are things that are starting more big
picture and then getting down into the
nitty gritty which could be anything
like a comma or use of a semicolon. So
starting with the general feedback,
that's going to be things like, "oh, this
is really great" or "this is something
that you can expand on and do really
well". Generally these are words of praise
or overall statements. Moving into
organization, someone can ask you, "why is
it that you decided to start with your
case study as opposed to starting with a
literature review," and this would be a
question of how it is that you're
presenting the information inside your
text and what kind of meaning that
conveys. Moving down to content, again
you could have a section in your
literary review or in your literature
review where you are missing a theory or
you don't go deep enough into a theory,
and if someone asks you to elaborate on
that, that would be considered something
in regards to content. Looking at
discipline-specific information, if you
were to write something in, let's say,
biology, I might not have the expertise
to give you discipline-specific
information
about cell division or something along
those lines. Someone like your professor
or your thesis advisor would be
able to give you information or feedback
that would let you know how it is your
field expects you to write and what it
is that you might be expected to
conclude. Moving down to lexical, that's a
case of, so, this could be an instance of
somewhere where the words that you're
using doesn't really clearly convey the
information that you wanted to, or
there's some ambiguity. So usually those
suggestions will ask you to elaborate,
explain what it is that you mean with
the use of a certain word, and build on
that.
Lastly moving down to grammatical, again
this is the most local concern, and
that's issues such as commas, semicolons,
sometimes it can include citations as
well, and that's usually the last step of
revision in which you're really just
trying to polish a piece before you send
it off for publication. Now there are a
couple things to consider when you are
revising and when you're receiving
feedback. One of them is the genre that
you're writing in. So as you can see on
the screen, you can have things such as
institutional documents, so that could be
something like a dissertation
chapter, a part of a thesis or prospectus
and these have specific genre
conventions that you need to consider. A
resume or a cover letter also has its
own genre conventions and expectations.
These genre conventions are usually in
place to help readers understand what it
is that you're saying and quickly find
information. Another thing to consider is
the use of or the consideration of
audience, and so when you're thinking
about your audience just like
with a genre, you want to consider what
it is that is a norm or expectation. So
when you're writing for your boss or
when you're writing for your
dissertation advisor, you might be
expected to use different terminology or
to approach a conversation in a specific
way. Remembering what it is that your
audience's expectations and what their
experiences and knowledge are is really
important to conveying your message and
making sure they understand what it is
that you're talking about. Yeah, based on
my experiences I usually get overwhelmed
with a lot of specific information or
feedback that I received from the
reviewer, so we would like to start talking about
some of the organization suggestions
when you received a lot of feedbacks. The
first thing I would do is to create a
spreadsheet to organize feedback. Doing
this, a lot of feedback were specific
information that you've received from
the reviewer can be easily placed in
each column and rows and then sorted by
the feedback type. Although a lot of
specific information and detailed
feedback in a review may be overwhelming
to deal at its raw state, but a
spreadsheet may help you to organize
your feedback in a better way.
Organize the suggestions you have
received in order for, uh, in order of
importance. You may want to focus on
global issues at first as Curtis has
shared previously, and then move on to
the local issues. Rewrite feedback in
your own words to help you understand it
better. You may want to take a moment
first to think about the feedback you
received, whether that make sense to you
or not, and then you want to rewrite that
in your own words so that you have better
understanding about the feedback.
Consider crafting a writer's memo to
help you organize your revision process.
While you're attending to the feedback
you would want to write a memo or kind
of journal to keep track of your revision
process so that you don't have to waste
any time to get on the point where
you left previously. Okay we are gonna do
this more activity. In this I will share
some peer feedback that I received from
the reviewer and then I will go through
how I'm going to approach it—this
feedback. Let me share the screen first.
The sample paper, before I get into the
comments, reviewer's comments, I would
like to give you some background
information about my paper. The title was
"When Preparation Matters:
A Mixed-Method Study of
In-Service
Teacher Preparation to Serve English
Learners."
This was a conference paper but I also
submitted to the journal, is a teacher
education journal and I got two
reviewers comments, and those comments
are pretty, like, summative style of the
feedback. And I will read the first:
"The paper has a clear and important aim
to study teachers' efficacy working with
the ELs. However the theoretical framework
did not clearly address the locus
control theory which guided the
qualitative data analysis. The method and
results are not clearly
presented to allow generalization of
findings. For example the sample
characteristics are not clearly
described. Quantitative analysis. Given
the small new teacher sample size, the
division into four groups is less
meaningful. Only descriptive statistics
but no ANOVA was used for." Yeah this
is a kind of summative feedback, with the
kind of details. Second reviewers
commented two things: first, citation
would be better for the definition of
self-efficacy. Second it probably needs
support sentences or a further
explanation for the other construction
of self-efficacy, mastery experience, and
needs transitions as well. So once I
receive this feedback, as we talked
about previously I will create a kind of
spreadsheet. Since I'm going to just use
the word document I will insert probably
just table.
So before I'm doing the table, yeah, let's
just check out what feedback types I
have. The first one, the reviewers were
talking about the theoretical framework so I
would color it with the different color.
And then another thing he pointed out,
methods section, especially sample
characteristic.
Then he was talking about the use of
different software for statistic result.
And second reviewers, they talked about
citation and then better definition for
self-efficacy, is related to theoretical
framework, similar to the first
reviewers comment. The asked me for more
details about the sentence level and
construction of the self-efficacy
mastery experience also part of the
theoretical framework. The last thing
was talking about the transition. Once I
color-coded I would categorize those
comments into types of feedbacks. The
first one was the theoretical framework, and
second was method, third. Once I
categorize those feedback into themes
and I can just write down what feedback
I have from the reviewers. So it was in
the method was a participant
characteristic. Quantitative analysis
for was ANOVA. When you're looking at
the first, theoretical framework, it makes
sense to me, so I would definitely add some
information about better definition of
the self-efficacy, focusing on mastery
experiences. And methods section yeah
when I look at their feedback it makes
sense to me as well, so I would add more
details [to the] profile of the participant.
However the third one, ANOVA, the use of
the different types of
the quantitative analysis tool, since I
used the different types which is, which
was SPS, I'm not going to
follow what reviewers suggested but I
just will explain what type of the
software I used for my data analysis.
Citation and transition organization
also, I am going to attend those feedback
by adding more citations and transition
organization or transition sentences. I
think this is pretty much how I am going to
approach—how I'm going to approach the
feedback that I received from the
reviewers. Great so just like what Sung Ae
was sharing was that a spreadsheet
is a really great way to organize the
feedback that you receive, especially
when you're receiving a lot of comments.
So some reviewers might give you inline
comments or line by line editing or
responses, and that might result in a lot
of feedback, they don't even really know
where to start,
so using that spreadsheet, whether it be
a table in a Word document or using
Excel, those are great ways to get things
organized and put them into categories.
That way you can start, again, from the
global and work down to the local.
Another concern that we had brought up
in our live workshop was, how do you not
get discouraged when you're seeing so
many comments or you're getting an
evaluation that says, hey, you're a ways
off from where you should be. And I think
one thing that's really important to
remember is that the people that you're
receiving feedback from whether they
be professors, your adviser, or even the
peer reviewers for an article that you're
submitting, the reason why they're giving
you feedback is because they want you to
be able to succeed and be able to create
the best work that you can. It's not an
evaluation that's saying that you're not
capable, it's just saying, hey, we're going
to help you get to the place that you
need to be to get into the field. So that
concludes our workshop for today. I hope
you all found the tips and suggestions
that were given helpful. If you have
further questions or concerns, you're
welcome to visit us at the Writing Lab
virtually at the moment. You can go to
owl.purdue.edu/writinglab and
one of the tutors will be glad to help
you. Thank you all for joining.
Bye!
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