Criterion-based feedback helps you find out bow your writing measures up to certain criteria -- in this case to those criteria most often used in judging expository or nonfiction writing. To get criterionbased. feedback you ask readers four broad, fundamental questions: | | What is the quality of the content of the writing: the ideas, the perceptions, the point of view? | | | How well is the writing organized? | | | How effective is the language? | | | Are there mistakes or inappropriate choices in usage? |
But because these questions are so broad, you usually get better feedback if you ask much more specific questions such as these: Is the basic idea a good one? Is it supported with logical reasoning or valid argument? Are there too many abstractions and too few examples or concrete details? Is the whole thing unified rather than pulling in two or three conflicting directions? Are the sentences clear and readable? Chapter 22 contains twenty-four of these questions grouped under the four general questions listed above.Reader-based feedback, on the other hand, instead of telling you how your writing measures up to preestablished criteria, tells you what your writing does to particular readers. To get reader-based feedback you ask readers three broad fundamental questions: | | What was happening to you, moment by moment, as you were reading the piece of writing? | | | Summarize the writing: give your understanding of what it says or what happened in it. | | | Make up some images for the writing and the transaction it creates with you. |
Here too you usually get better feedback by helping your reader out with more specific questions like these: Now that you have finished reading just the first one or two paragraphs or stanzas, are you an interested, cooperative reader or are you bored or resistant in some way? Point to the places where you had the most trouble and describe what kind of trouble it was for you. Summarize your understanding of the whole piece. What mood or voice do you hear in the words? What kind of people does the writer seem to be talking to: people in the know? nincompoops? interested amateurs? How is the writer giving it to you: willingly? slyly? grudgingly? hitting you over the head with it? The next-to-last chapter in this section, 23, contains forty-one of these specific questions grouped under the three general questions above. . . . Criterion-based feedback, then, tells you how your writing measures up, reader-based feedback tells you what it does to readers. What is its quality? vs. How does it work? But the distinction between the two can sometimes, in practice, seem fuzzy. That is, sometimes when a reader gives you a piece of criterion-based feedback (for example, "This piece isn't unified"), it may just be his way of saying what was happening inside him ("I felt a bit in the fog most of the time I was reading -- I didn't know where I was going"). Or if a reader gives you a piece of reader-based feedback ("When I got here, I stopped short and said, No sid I won't buy that for one minute!"), it may just be his way of saying "Your logic is faulty here." Indeed, a reader cannot possibly give you a piece of criterion-based feedback except on the basis of something having happened inside him; nor can a reader give you a piece of reader-based feedback without at least implying a criterion of judgment or perception. But that interdependence between the two kinds of feedback does not diminish the important difference between them. It will make a practical difference to you whether you ask readers for one or the other.Thus if a reader tells you "This piece lacks unity," you can surmise that something happened inside him, but you don't really know what happened. Perhaps he felt foggy and lost, as I interpreted above, but perhaps he knew perfectly well where the writing was going, but he saw extraneous matter in it that didn't belong. Did it annoy him or did it just violate his sense of unity? Did he feel mosquitoes continually distracting his attention or just notice with calm disapproval the toys scattered on the floor? His comment on your lack of unity tells you nothing of how he experienced your words. Conversely, if a reader gives you reader-based feedback -- for example, "I felt lost here," he's giving you information about his reaction but not much about the writing: Is he lost because of your logic? your wording? Or do you have so many details here that he can no longer follow the main point? So if you want messages about the writing you should ask for criterion-based feedback, and if you want to know what happened in the reader you should ask for reader-based feedback. That would seem to indicate that you should always ask for criterion-based feedback since it is writing you are trying to work on, not psychology. But the crucial question about any piece of writing intended for an audience is not "How does it measure up against certain criteria" such as good sentences, good logic, or good paragraphs, but "How does it work on readers?" The quality of the sentences, logic, or paragraphs is irrelevant if the writing does to readers what you want it to do. So that tips the scales back again to reader-based feedback as more useful. But of course it's not that simple. For even if you know all about what's going on in readers, you also need messages about your writing if you want to fix it or change it in any way. Otherwise you'll be stuck telling your reader, I know you are lost, you've given me a vivid description of your lostness, but what is it in my writing that makes you feel lost? Is it my wording? My paragraphing? My logic?" And so of course you should try for both criterion-based and reader-based feedback. Indeed, each kind of feedback enhances the other. Every time you get some criterion-based feedback, you can encourage the reader to tell you about the reactions he had which gave rise to his statement about unity or paragraphs or spelling. And every time you get reader-based feedback you can encourage the reader to tell you what it was in the writing that caused these reactions in him-was it the logic, the use of evidence, the diction, or what? Nevertheless each kind of feedback has its own special virtues which make it particularly useful in certain situations. |
