"What do you mean it doesn't make sense!" - Interpreting Feedback at University.

This topic always makes me smile, simply because it brings back fond and yet markedly bitter memories of receiving feedback. One memory in particular, stays with me as a prime example of how feedback on an assignment can, at times, completely baffle students.

Long story short, one of my early assignments at postgraduate level received feedback of a question mark. Needless to say my own verbal feedback on the feedback was also inexplicably short (I'll leave it to your imagination, but it was explicit in its identification of a punctuation mark as not being feedback!)

As much as this experience has been etched on my memory as something rather negative, it was still a useful learning moment nevertheless as once I had recovered from the initial dismay of the

aforementioned punctuation mark, I remembered that while the feedback that I had received at undergraduate had not been quite as succinct, it had also not been explicitly detailed either and had still required

some interpretation.

So how exactly is such interpretation to be accomplished? In the first place, you have to accept and understand that the feedback is not personally motivated (I say this with the wisdom of someone who now works in HE) because, while it is all too easy and indeed, not uncommon to let yourself believe that a lecturer simply does not like you, or has it in for you (and yes I did as well, I am still pretty sure certain that at least one did not like me, I probably should not have told them that I was after their job in retrospect...) it is simply not true.

Without going into it in too much detail, there are rules governing feedback and conduct of teaching staff in HE so they simply cannot put a personal spin on their feedback (or at least do their best to ensure that bias doesn't creep in) and this is as much for your protection as theirs. While your markers are attempting to instill some resilience and independent critical skill in you by requiring you to interpret their feedback, they are also ensuring that their influence on your rewrites will be minimal at best and keeping you away from treading the lines of plagiarism and academic misconduct (see my previous blogpost).

At the same time as accepting this, you also have to let go of any preconceived notions of your work being complete or finished. This isn’t as harsh as it sounds, but rather, is realistic. In the first place, Higher Education, albeit being a world away from school or college, is still education, meaning you still have things to learn. In the second, even the most accomplished academics still receive feedback on their work, usually in the form of peer reviewing, while every “new” edition of their work also represents the ongoing process of changing, updating and improving. This does not represent failure but rather, growth and development.

Train yourself to remember that just because something is published or submitted, does not mean that it is complete and you should approach your own work the exact same way. What you have produced is the most satisfying form of your work, that much is true and you can be proud of that. You can certainly feel accomplished, but you cannot feel completed.

Once you have overcome these two barriers then (or at least taken the required time to calm down from seeing a solitary question mark on the side of your page) the next step is to re-read your work and ignore your own egotistical voice that tells you it's good or fine as it is. This is hard, it might even be the hardest thing you have to do with your work, but you have to look coldly at this beautiful thing you slaved to produce and ask yourself some searching and frankly scientific questions.

Do you understand your point (not your point in terms of the whole essay, because saying "Oh but it makes sense if you read the rest" is just an excuse.

Does this one single section of writing, be it a single sentence or more, make sense to you now, weeks after you wrote it?"

Are you honestly happy with it, (not defensive of it) are you objectively happy with it, again, weeks after you wrote it?

If the answer to either of these questions is no or even if there is an iota of doubt in respect of either of them, you move onto the nitty gritty dissection of it, look for repetition, sentence length and structure, use of language, punctuation, grammar, (your tutor will have looked for all of these things and more besides). Go back to the feedback because no matter how short, there will be some indication, even if it is just a question mark because this literally means the reader has questions, and questions mean something was not clear, so look for it, ask yourself, what is not clear here? Is it the language, the content, the structure? It must be something so sit down and find it!

Of course you might receive feedback which is more explanatory, something like "this sentence/paragraph is confusing or unclear" and in this case, you have a clear indication of where to look, in that specific section (again, not in the context of the whole piece, just that part) and again you ask yourself, what did you mean to say or try to say here? Does it say that (well judging by the feedback, obviously not!) and therefore, why not? Again, is it the language, the content or the structure?

At the end of it all, the more open you are to receiving and accepting feedback, the easier the process of interpretation will be for you, but the best advice I can give you is to develop your own critical eye because the more developed you are in this respect, in looking for spelling, grammar, linguistic and stylistic mistakes, the more you will glean from the feedback and the more useful it will be to you.