Teacher Has in Helping Students Develop Their

¶ … teacher has in helping students develop their writing. Traditional methods of grading and scoring children's writing are being replaced in the modern educational system with feedback and constructive criticism of the work, rather than a trophy grade or labeling score.

This study reviews literature previously compiled on the subject of feedback in the development of children's writing, as well as conducting original research with a small group of students and teachers that helps evaluate the role of feedback in writing, as well as determining what types of feedback are the most effective.

Overview & Evaluation of the Project According to a seasoned author of the British Educational Research Journal, "Education without educational research can be governed by dogma, superstition, tradition and other forms of prejudice about what will work well and be 'good for' those involved in the educational process." (Murphy 1996) Education is an ongoing process, and even the most experienced teacher remains a student as well. It has always been the goal of parents, teachers, and mentors to provide the best start to life as possible for young children.

Education is the foundation for a productive, successful life, and the ability to craft and comprehend language is one of the greatest skills learned during the school years. It can be a challenge to motivate students to write, as well as a challenge to help them develop their abilities in this area through any means. It has been discovered through years of trial and error, as well as carefully formulated research, that feedback is essential to the learning process of students.

In the area of creative writing in particular, students may find it difficult to develop skills when presented with a letter grade or numerical score as their only source of feedback. Students must receive feedback that can actually answer their questions and keep them on a path to literary success. It is the major goal of this study to examine the effect of a teacher's written feedback on creative writing and how this aids children's progression in creative writing.

This project aims to investigate the effect of a variety of written forms of feedback used to mark children's work, and how these effect the quality of subsequent pieces of creative writing. 4. LITERATURE REVIEW A great deal of research has been done regarding the effects of teacher feedback on the development of creative writing in children.

In reviewing the literature on this subject, a common thread can be found declaring that traditional methods of feedback may not be the most effective methods available for encouraging and developing children's writing, and that a more inclusive approach must be taken to best serve the needs of children. The following review of literature will give an overview of current theories relating to how teacher feedback affects children's progression in writing.

The author of the book Children's Minds (Donaldson 1989) warns teachers and other mentors involved in the education of children to avoid labeling students as a failure, which is a common occurrence in many traditional methods of "grading" children's work.

"If the child is defined as a failure he will almost certainly fail, at any rate in the things which the definers value; and perhaps later he will hit out very hard against those who so defined him." (Donaldson 1989) Marking a child's writing assignment with a grade that represents failure may be a way of defining that child himself as a failure. Children must be respected in their creativity and achievements.

However, it is also harmful to children to provide them with false or meaningless praise in the name of avoiding negative definitions. A child will often be the most accurate judge of his or her achievements and progress, and therefore it is very important that the feedback given to children be a way to help that child genuinely achieve more and strive for higher standards for his or her own sake.

Studies have shown that there is a direct correlation between early reading skills and self-image (Donaldson 1989), meaning that it is not only the feedback received which influences the child's self-esteem and motivation, but also actual achievement. The ability and skill level of the child must be assessed with both sensitivity and objective accuracy; mistakes, errors, and shortcomings of the written work should not be ignored for the sake of the child's feelings, but rather used as an opportunity to guide progress and constructively critique the work.

Unfortunately, there is no specific formula for teaching and feedback that ensure this ideal is reached in the classroom. Teachers must accept that errors will occur and respond to them in a constructive way; one author refers to this as the true art of teaching, for there is no set of rules to follow. "Obviously much depends on the child's personality. Ways that work with a passive withdrawn child will not work with a hyperactive impulsive one.

And if the child is functioning very poorly it is necessary to concentrate on helping him over his difficulties without too much delay." (Donaldson 1989) This point is further emphasized that it remains vital to avoid the traditional methods of rewarding "good work" regardless of how this art is crafted.

Giving rewards, such as gold stars or special privileges, for achievements in writing work will not only define those who do not receive them as failures, but it will also discourage children from engaging in writing voluntarily when no rewards are present. These prizes are removed from the act of writing itself, and teachers must find ways to use feedback in order to help children excel in and enjoy writing for the sake of writing.

The compilation of research presented in "Grading Student's Classroom Writing: Issues and Strategies" (ERIC 2001) deals further with the issues and questions that must be dealt with in approaching grading students' writing. Concerns include how to create effective writing assignments, how to maintain a fair and professional sense of judgment, including students in the assessment process, and how to formulate the most helpful feedback. It is important for every teacher to communicate with students about every aspect of assignments, and take many things into consideration.

The writing process includes several stages, and the grading process should consist of more than the final grade or score which results from that process. "When the grade is abstracted from the grading process, students may be left wondering how a grade was derived.. evaluation may be severed from the process of writing." (ERIC 2001) Students should be able to learn how to approach writing, as well as how to evaluate their own writing and the writing of their peers, from the evaluation and feedback process.

"A powerful way to promote students' learning is to involve them in the grading process... Students' involvement also includes self-assessments. Providing effective feedback to students will help them learn to revise their writing." (ERIC 2001) Ineffective forms of feedback which are identified here include cryptic responses, negative responses, and too much response, all of which are primarily focused on the negative and errors.

A positive approach is more constructive, including creating a dialogue when writing responses, refraining from unnecessary criticisms, providing good writing models, and summarizing all marginal comments at the end. "Positive, well written responses perfect the art of providing effective feedback to students and serve as models of desirable writing." (ERIC 2001) Sean Hawthorne (2004) of Auckland University addresses the concerns of apathy and disinterest among students, and the importance of finding ways to motivate students to write.

"Language development is essential to intellectual growth....Given this understanding of the importance of English it is disconcerting that many students remain disengaged." (Hawthorne 2004) Hawthorne mentions the "process writing" and "whole-language" approaches to writing in the classroom, as well as noting the lack of information available regarding motivating children to write. There are four conditions that enhance the motivation to write: "(1) Nurturing functional beliefs about writing. (2) Fostering student engagement through authentic writing goals and contexts. (3) Providing a supportive context for writing.

(4) Creating a positive emotional environment in which to write." (Bruning & Horn 2000 in Hawthorne 2004) Without motivation, students will not apply themselves to writing. Feedback is a fundamental part of motivating students to write. Studies have found that low achievers will attribute success or failure to external factors beyond their control, such as luck. This can be related back to the concerns raised by Donaldson (1989) that traditional reward methods for encouraging writing are not effective, for they cause students to remove writing from internal and related factors.

"Good writers tended to believe that writing aided memory, learning, organization and thinking...[and] a means of personal expression and exploration and a way of communicating thoughts and feelings. Poor writers...believed that writing was done primarily as school 'work'....engaging in writing for the purposes of doing their work, getting it right and making a finished product which could be assessed by the teacher." (Hawthorne 2004) Feedback methods should strive to erase this gap between the "good" and "bad" student writers' understanding of the importance of writing and language.

"The common practice of giving grades to students for their writing is counter-productive...this is a form of assessment that does not give the writer very useful feedback on how they can improve." (Hawthorne 2004) Goal-setting as a form of feedback, and used in conjunction with other feedback methods, can be highly motivating because they encourage students to persist with an activity for an extended period of time, and challenging goals will help students reach their potential. Hawthorne additionally notes the importance of Process Writing, rather than "product" writing, for students.

In the Students' Roles in Formative Assessment by the Standards Site Department for Education and Skills (2005), the importance of commenting on students' work and avoiding emphasizing the grade or score received on the written work. The feedback given on a piece of writing must offer guidance on how the work can be improved, or else it becomes useless in the development of the student writer. In fact, studies have shown that written comments are often ignored by students if the paper has also received a grade.

According to one teacher, "Previously I would have marked the work and graded it and made a comment. The pupils only saw the mark and/or credit. After a credit they lost any motivation to improve. Now they get credit only after we have gone over the work so they have an incentive to understand the work." (Standards 2005) Teachers and students may benefit from moving away from giving grades on writing and instead giving written comments only.

While technology has offered a great many services to young writers, there is also the threat of further depersonalization of the writing process. In some classrooms, computers -- not teachers -- are grading students' writing. (Sedensky 2005) Glorified spelling- and grammar-check programs cycle through student writing and assign a score without a teacher ever reviewing the work. "Like other essay-grading software, it analyzes sentences and paragraphs, looking for keywords as well as the relationship between terms.

Other programs compare a student's paper with a database of already-scored papers, seeking to assign it a score based on what other similar-quality assignments have received." (Sedensky 2005) While some advocates of such technology brag about the ability of teachers to give written assignments without fear of the workload of grading the writing, however this sends a dangerous message to students.

If teachers are not willing to take the time to review and give personal feedback on writing, students will certainly not feel obligated to devote themselves to putting maximum effort into the process. It may be said that removing the subjectivity from grading written work is the plus side of such technology, in fact this is one of the most significant downfalls. There is no set formula for evaluating and providing feedback to students, and it must be an individualized process.

A computer-generated score does not provide constructive feedback and will discourage students from seeing writing as an important process rather than a mandatory school activity. "What you're learning, really, is how to cheat the program," (Sedensky 2005) not how to become an effective writer. The book Teaching English (Brindley 1995) reminds that "very close reading of children's writing is essential, because that is the best means we have of understanding their writing processes.

Children value perceptive comments, responses and questions on their writing, but they quickly see through perfunctory approval and generalized faint praise. And it's worth remembering that for very many children, for many years, their teachers are the only readers of the bulk of their work." (Britton in Brindley 1995) When teachers respond in flippant comments or negative feedback, students are likely to respond in much the same way as they would with a computer reading their written work.

Students will produce sterile writing that focuses on giving the teacher only what is acceptable and avoiding anything that might not fit into the teacher's requirements, just like trying to cheat a computer program. Feedback should instead foster confidence, experimentation with language, and active learning. Jason Gordon Williams (2003) reviews methods of feedback common in written assignments for students of English as a second language, but his work is nonetheless relevant to English as a primary language students as well.

The two main kinds of feedback, as defined by Williams, are feedback on form and feedback on content. Feedback on form includes corrections of surface errors, indicating the location and type of error, or simply pointing out surface errors. Feedback on content is most commonly written comments. Feedback on form has been found to overemphasize the negative and therefore be ineffective in developing quality writing skills, however feedback on content (written comments, in specific) can only be more effective if the comments are not vague, contradictory, or inconsistent.

Feedback on content is most effective when the location of the error is indicated, but the students actively figure out the problem and how to fix it themselves; indirect feedback may be more effective than direct correction. Written feedback is particularly effective when student-teacher conferencing also takes place. Bush and Santi (2004), of the Center for Learning and Teaching Excellence, explain that it is importance in both feedback on form and feedback on content to focus on the most important aspects of corrections that need to be made.

"When students turn in papers with typos, misspellings, or errors in grammar, teachers may be inclined to go ballistic with their red pens...Although poor presentation and lack of attention to surface features can be distracting, correcting or editing such weaknesses should not be where you spend your time.

Get to the meat of the matter -- a student's ideas and how he or she has structured them." (Bush & Santi 2004) It is suggested that teachers make their first comments on ideas and organization of the written piece, rather than grammatical errors. Making positive comments and giving an end comment that shows real interest in the student's ideas are very beneficial to the writing process. Avoiding over commenting as well as providing comments on specific passages (rather than vague, nonspecific comments) are also recommendations.

Bush and Santi also express the potential benefits of peer review for writing, where students can use structured review sessions to provide peer feedback on each other's writing in groups or one-on-one sessions. In the book Unlocking Writing (Williams 2002), the concept of teaching at the point of writing is discussed. Traditional feedback in student writing takes place after the writing is complete rather than teaching during the entire writing process.

"Teaching at the point of writing focuses on demonstrating and exploring the decisions that writers make in the process of composition. This emphasis is complemented by the encouragement of shared writing and a focus on particular aspects of the writing process: planning, composing, revising, editing and redrafting..." (Williams 2002) In the same book, Jones (2002) notes the importance of good writing skills in determining the influence a student will have later in life.

Children's writing is, unfortunately, usually "brief and fragmentary...lacking a clear sense of purpose." (Jones 2002) Most teachers are more comfortable teaching reading than writing, so little emphasis is put on the importance of writing, and students will achieve much higher in reading while writing ability lags. The process approach to writing treats the stages of the writing process as equally important to the finished product. The stages include making decisions, planning, drafting, responding, presenting and publishing, and reflecting.

This allows children to experiment with how writing works, as well as gain an understanding of how writing works and gain confidence as they master this process. Using writing frames in the drafting stages of writing is beneficial for the student and teacher alike. "They provide a structure and direction for children's ideas on a chosen topic and act as a scaffold to support the writer.

Writing frames are designed to encourage informed dialogue between teachers and children and their peers." (Jones 2002) Additionally, working with the students during this process allows teachers to see where strengths and weaknesses in writing actually exist for each individual, and therefore feedback can be highly constructive. "It also allows the teacher to intervene effectively at critical stages in the process." (Jones 2002) 5. METHODOLOGY The purpose of this section is to present qualitative methodology that will be used to establish the specific aims of this study, which are the following: 1.

The variety of written feedback styles that are typically used (such as full written details, grading, target setting, etc.) and relate the use of these in the classroom to the previously discussed research about these styles; 2. The current abilities of the children in the research group (references to, and examples of, previous work will be included; 3. The kinds of creative writing that the children will be doing during the research project, with clear objectives; 4.

The opinions of the children with regard to the styles of written feedback they prefer and the reasons for this preference; 5. Comparisons about the styles of written work that the children are asked to undertake and how this is differentiated. It has been revealed in the Literature Review that the traditional grading system is not the most effective form of feedback for students' writing. Creative writing projects, in particular, require a great deal of thought to be put into the kind of feedback that is given to the student.

Various methods of feedback include both verbal and written feedback, which can range from very brief, nonspecific comments to lengthy, detailed comments. The most effective feedback a teacher can give for writing is specific, positive, constructive, and is itself an example of well-formed writing. Children must be encouraged to enjoy the writing process, and to be actively involved in the goal-setting and Process Writing. Students should be encouraged to experiment and have confidence in their work, as well as learning how to honestly appraise their achievements in writing.

The best way to research the effects of different feedback methods on the creative writing process of students is to work with students directly. The evidence for this project will be derived from examples of children's writing. These examples will be obtained through an actual classroom activity with a group of students. From the example classroom, a focus group of six students that represent the achievement levels of the entire student population will be chosen based on writing performance from previous assignments.

Two of these students will be average ability pupils, two of these students will be higher ability pupils, and two of these students will be lower ability pupils. The makeup of the focus group will be as follows: 1. Rose - Average Ability Pupil 2. Amy - Average Ability Pupil 3. Sarah - Higher Ability Pupil 4. William - Higher Ability Pupil 5. Christian - Lower Ability 6.

Gina - Lower Ability Pupil (also has Asperger's Syndrome) This will give a complete range of the kind of writing abilities that are found within the student population of this class. This focus group will participate along with the rest of the class in several writing assignments of different styles, and they will receive various types of feedback during the course of their work.

(The details of these assignments will be given later in the methodology.) An important note must be acknowledged regarding the choice of the focus group for this study. It may be noticed that while there is equal representation for each writing ability level within this group, there is not an even representation of male vs. female students. Both of the Average Ability Pupils in this focus group are female, although the Lower Ability and Higher Ability has an equal gender division.

This decision was made consciously because, while gender differences are an important part of the motivational and development aspects of the writing progress, this study has a limited scope in order to ensure detailed study of the included factors. A delimitation of this study is that gender differences will not be approached in depth, if at all. A further part of the methodology will include interviews with two distinct related groups.

The children of this focus group in this study will be interviewed at the commencement of the project about the styles of feedback they have received in the past from other teachers and from within this classroom. This interview will consist of the following four questions: 1. What kind of marking do you like to see in your book after you have done some writing in literacy? 2. When you see a comment in your book, do you read it again to see how you can improve your work? 3.

What styles of written feedback/marking have other teachers done that you either really liked or really disliked? 4. Do you prefer written or verbal instructions at the start of the lesson? An important consideration during the interview with the focus group of students is the differences that are inherent in interviewing children vs. interviewing adults. The acknowledgment and validation of children themselves as a source of information about their own individual feelings, abilities, behaviors, and so forth is considered to be a recent phenomenon.

"Most of what we know about interviewing we know from interviewing adults, from our experience being interviewed as adults, and from research done on adult interviewing." (Garbarino 1992) An acknowledgment must be made here regarding a further delimitation of this study, which is that an accurate and consistent technique for interviewing children is difficult or maybe even impossible to reach. Interviews are inherently sources of misinformation, due to interviewer and respondent "errors," as well as many other factors.

These interviews will therefore not be interpreted on a verbatim level, but rather taken somewhat face-value and as a whole. Additionally, interview questions will be asked of a small focus group of teachers as well, in order to help understand the effectiveness and shortcoming of feedback methods from the other point-of-view. The interview questions that will be asked of teachers will include the following questions: 1. What types of feedback methods have you used with students in the past? 2.

Which of these feedback methods do you still use today, and which have you chosen to discontinue? (Alternately, which feedback methods do you plan or expect to discontinue in the future 3. Why have you selected these methods of feedback? 4. What specific obstacles do you feel interfere with the ability to have constructive feedback in the classroom? There are two lessons that will be incorporated into this study.

Both of these lessons will follow an abbreviated Process Writing model, based on the following simple writing frame: Brainstorming --> Outline --> Draft --> Final Piece The topic of Lesson A was "A Dilemma." Other than this suggestion, the children will be given a great deal of freedom in choosing the subject of the short story, and each child will chose their own dilemma. In order to aid the thought process for each student, a Spider Chart will be used for brainstorming.

On the board, the class will work together on this chart for basic ideas. Each student will then create his or her own Spider Chart, which will consist of a one or two sentence outline of what the dilemma of the story will be, followed by a flow chart of the progression of the dilemma through the story in bubbles. These bubbles will connect together in a pattern that creates a visual representation of how thoughts may be "bounced" around to make a decision.

This outline will receive feedback, and the student will then proceed to writing a draft of the story, and finally a finished story produced, and final feedback given. The writing prompt for Lesson B. will use a variety of everyday objects to trigger the children's imagination in creative writing. The same writing frame will be followed, but using different methods. Instead of a spider chart, the children will use "idea cards" to brainstorm.

These cards will each contain one element that the student wishes to incorporate into the final story, and these cards will then be reorganized to form the action sequence for the plot. The draft will then be created with the help of some teacher feedback, and a final draft created. Two very different approaches to feedback styles will be used in Lesson A and Lesson B. In Lesson A, the feedback will attempt to be brief and supportive, but not overly specific.

The feedback will be given after the outline/chart is created. Lesson B, however, will have far more detailed feedback incorporated. Specific points will be addressed on how the children's work may be improved. Lesson A will use a minimalistic approach to give the students the most freedom, while Lesson B. may approach being too prescriptive and reduce the freedom of creativity. However, both methods may have positive or negative effects which will be evaluated. 6.

RESEARCH ANALYSIS The bulk of the original research for this project consisted of the written results of two assigned Lessons (Lesson A and Lesson B) from the focus group of six students, as well as two sets of interviews, the first with the focus group of students, and the second with a group of teachers. The data collected by these means has been analyzed using the research performed during the literature review on this subject.

In the following research analysis, specific examples of pieces of writing and the feedback methods used will be analyzed. (Copies of the examples from Lesson A and Lesson B. can be found in the Appendix for reference.) Additionally, the interview responses from both teachers and students will be taken into consideration in order to form a conclusion about which feedback methods are the most effective. Finally, a plan for improving the use of feedback in the classroom will be formulated based on these findings.

The following examples taken from the different in-class assignments illustrate how the different methods of feedback have been utilized for these lessons. The first example (Example 1) is a story written by Amy, who is one of the Average Ability Pupils from the focus group. This was written in response to Lesson B, which used common items to inspire stories, and idea cards for the brainstorming and outlining process. Amy's work was about a magic ring that can transport people through space.

The feedback given on the draft of this piece was very detailed and specific: "You have some lovely ideas in this piece. To improve it, consider the following: -Read it out (word for word) to a response partner. Does it make sense? If not, add any changes you need to make. -Think about how you can extend some of the ideas in your story. Choose 2 or 3 key points and rewrite them with more details. -Rules for speech marks! Well done!" This is an excellent example of positive, constructive feedback.

It begins and ends on a positive note, pointing out the strong aspects of the piece, rather than focusing on the negative things. Instead of implying that there is something wrong with the story, this feedback instead encourages Amy to strive for an even better story, a form a goal setting. The suggestion to read the story out loud with a response partner encourages further feedback from a peer. This method will help Amy perform a self-evaluation, as well as getting helpful feedback from another student.

Instead of telling the student specifically what to change or improve, this feedback gives the student guidelines to help her find the areas that need improvement on her own, which will make it far more likely that she will actually learn the punctuation and language rules. The feedback on this draft was so effective that the final draft of the paper achieved excellence and has been displayed in the classroom; it was clear that all of the feedback given on the draft was taken into consideration.

The feedback methods used encouraged her to improve the work, and also to take greater pride in the composition and appearance of her writing. This feedback effectively guided the student without becoming too prescriptive. The second example (Example 2) is a short story by William, one of the Higher Ability Pupils. This was from Lesson A. This is an example of a far more minimalistic approach to feedback. Very little written feedback was given on the draft, however verbal instructions and suggestions were given to the student.

The written feedback consisted of the following only: "Good so far. Try to include as many reasons as possible." William's short story was one of the most literarily impressive pieces submitted for Lesson A. While most of the students chose dilemmas with little or no serious consequences associated with the decision, William showed a true understanding of what kind of dilemma makes a suspenseful story. His choice to write a piece of historical fiction also demonstrates his understanding of how fiction writing functions.

The verbal feedback used with William did have influence on the writing of the final piece, however it may have been more effective to give him more written feedback that could be reviewed and contemplated during the writing process. William's work was certainly impressive, however it is difficult to say if this is because of effective feedback, or because William already has a strong grasp on Process Writing techniques. The third example (Example 3) is another piece written for Lesson A, by Sarah, a Higher Ability Pupil.

The minimalistic written feedback given on this outline was the only feedback given; no verbal feedback was given. "These are great ideas. I hope you can include most of them in your draft. Well done." After doing the outline, Sarah presented her dilemma as a role play. Her Spider Chart outline was very detailed and showed that she already had a strong image in her head for the final piece.

Sarah's work is a perfect example of how the writing frame steps of Process Writing are a guide, but as students become more comfortable with the process of writing all of the suggested steps may not be necessary. Sarah's work did not seem to need extensive feedback, as the final product was beautiful. Sarah additionally showed pride in her writing by illustrating the story. The fourth example (Example 4) was written by Christian, one of the Lower Ability Pupils, for Lesson A.

Christian needed particular assistance in formulating his outline, and this is the stage where feedback was the most beneficial to his writing process. All of the details were included in his Spider Chart, however they were unorganized and lacked direction. Feedback was very minimalistic, however it provided the needed guidance to help Christian formulate his own ideas into a comprehensive draft. The Spider Chart was not as effective for his brainstorming, so he was encouraged to try to a list format instead. "Good..

Can you list the ideas below for each part of the dilemma? Then start your draft." Christian was simply encouraged with praise, and then given a goal for the next step. This goal setting was very effective, and the restructuring of the outline allowed him to respond well to this feedback. The fifth example (Example 5) was written by Rose, the second Average Ability Pupil in the focus group. This example is particularly of interest because Rose gave feedback on the feedback she received.

This exemplifies how effective feedback functions quite differently than a simple grade mark or score given to the paper. While feedback such as "Good job" or a star on the assignment may make a student feel validated, written out feedback will foster critical thinking, self-evaluation, and constructive communication between the giver and the recipient of the feedback.

The fact that Rose chose to respond to the feedback that was given to her shows that she gave deep consideration to the suggestions and was able to use that to further evaluate and develop her writing. Finally, the sixth example (Example 6) was written by Gina, the Lower Ability Pupil with Asperger's Syndrome. This was for Lesson B, where more feedback was given. Gina received similar feedback to that given in the first example (Example 1). Encouragement was prominent, and a focus on the positive aspects of the work.

Gina was given feedback that guided her through an effective self-evaluation, as well as participating in verbal feedback from a peer by reading the story out loud to a response partner. Gina's work improved grammatically, and she also showed great pride in her finished product by illustrating the story. In addition to evaluating the pieces of writing which received feedback during class, the answers which students from the focus group gave during interviews have also been reviewed and analyzed.

The students gave a wide range of answers, providing both positive and negative critiques of the feedback they have received. The students responded overwhelmingly that they like stamps and stickers on their writing assignments that indicate how well they did on the assignment. While the literature reviewed reveals that there are many dangers that may be associated with using this method of feedback, for both students that do and do not receive such ornaments, it is difficult to say with certainty whether or not this practice should be continued.

It does certainly encourage the students, and if used as a part of an overall balanced feedback system, the possible harm of the sticker/stamp reward method is very minimal. The students also responded in a majority that meaningful feedback, rather than non-constructive or essentially meaningless comments (even positive ones), is more important to them during feedback.

Students say that they would like to receive more information on how they can improve their writing, and one student explicitly states that giving negative feedback is just fine if the student has not put effort into their work. The students in the.