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Virtues of Criterion-based Feedback |
| • | Criterion-based feedback is the kind of feedback most people are accustomed to -- what they've usually gotten from teachersand so it's the kind of feedback that comes most naturally to people's lips when you ask them for feedback. And because I provide such a long list of very specific questions, you can avoid one of the main problems of criterion-based feedback: people not knowing what qualities to look for in the writing or else commenting entirely on the basis of just a few favorite criteria. |
| • | Criterion-based feedback is the kind of feedback most people are accustomed to -- what they've usually gotten from teachersand so it's the kind of feedback that comes most naturally to people's lips when you ask them for feedback. And because I provide such a long list of very specific questions, you can avoid one of the main problems of criterion-based feedback: people not knowing what qualities to look for in the writing or else commenting entirely on the basis of just a few favorite criteria. | | • | It's the more practical and easier to understand of the two kinds of feedback because it speaks more directly about your writing. You have an easier time figuring out how to improve your writing if someone tells you your piece is not clearly organized than if he tells you he felt vaguely uneasy the whole time he was reading. Thus, it is especially good for revising (rather than for general long-term learning about the effect of your words on audiences). | | • | Indeed, you can even use these questions to get feedback from yourself as you are revising -- as a checklist for finding weaknesses in your draft, These questions help you see what you have just written through fresh "outside" eyes -- through the grid of external criteria. Reader-based questions, on the other hand, would be hard to answer by yourself. | | • | Criterion-based feedback helps you isolate particularly troublesome aspects of your writing and then concentrate on them in revising and in future writing. For example, perhaps you have trouble getting rid of digressions or making clear transitions between sections. Once you learn this through criterion-based feedback, you can check each piece of writing yourself for these particular dangers. And you can ask readers specifically for feedback on these matters which they might otherwise neglect. | | • | Thus you can use criterion-based feedback more quickly if you want to: just zoom in and inquire about a couple of areas and stop. It's hard to get reader-based feedback quickly. |
| If you have only one reader for feedback, criterion-based questions will help him pay attention to a broad range of qualities in the writing-noticing things he might neglect if he just reacted naturally. Perhaps he mostly reacts to the kind of person or tone of voice he feels in the writing and neglects organization and logicaltogether. Or perhaps he reacts almost entirely to logic and evidence but ignores tone of voice. | | Criterion-based feedback is good for readers who are insensitive to nuances or who are reluctant to talk about their own reactions. | | Criterion-based feedback is more verifiable than reader-based feedback. If a reader says your logic or spelling is wrong you can verify his judgment. If a reader says your organization or paragraphing is weak, you cannot verify his judgment, of course, but if you get three or four intelligent readers to give you their judgments too -- and give you their reasons and discuss the question among themselves -- you probably can reach a trustworthy objective conclusion. | | Criterion-based feedback is good if you want to work on your conscious understanding of the criteria used in judging writing. It helps you have brief and instructive discussions on the order of "What makes a good introduction?" or "Well, what does make a paragraph hang together?" It leads to discussions of conscious craft in writing. | Criterion-based feedback is useful for readers who must comment on many pieces of writing in one sitting or in a comparatively short period of time. That's why teachers tend to use it. It's nearly impossible to read a whole stack of papers in one sitting and react to each one fully, for itself, and on its own terms. It's much easier -- and perhaps even fairer in the long run -- to choose a manageable set of good criteria and apply them to each paper as you read it. Thus if I must read and comment on a large stack of essays in one evening I will tend to read each one in terms of criteria such as unity, argument, clarity of language, mechanics, and how well they fit the audience/purpose. I will also try to include something about how it felt to read this essay, but if I am too tired or bored or worried about something else, I may not have any feelings other | than the ones that are intruding on me from the rest of my lifeboredom or irritation or impatience. Criterion-based feedback has the enormous virtue of permitting you to read with less than full attention and still -- if you are practiced -- give accurate feedback on specific criteria. | | If, in particular, your task is to judge or rank a set of writings -- if, for example, you must choose among ten job applications or if you are on a committee to chose the best essay or poem for a competition -- you can probably be more fair and accurate if you judge in terms of explicit criteria. Otherwise it's often a matter of judging apples against oranges -- just a matter of each piece producing noncomparable reactions in readers. And if you feel one piece is clearly best, that feeling may be based entirely on one criterion that you especially value -- for example clarity of language or the personal qualities that show through -- and you may be neglecting seven other important criteria that are well achieved in some other piece of writing that happens to leave you cold. | | And so if you are writing something for a reader who will judge the writing according to criteria -- perhaps for a teacher who will read and evaluate a large stack of essays in one sitting criterion-based feedback may be especially helpful to you in revising your piece. You can try to find out what criteria he will use. Many requests or guidelines for writing tell you the criteria readers will use, for example, guidelines for a grant application or a letter of recommendation ("Applications will be judged on the basis of . . . "). It's worth asking a teacher to tell you about the criteria he uses in grading, even if he doesn't use them with complete consistency. But it's important to remember that people often judge on the basis of different criteria from the ones they think they are using. |
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