Tags
by Cally Guerin
As we approach the festive season, some of us are encouraged to believe that the giving of gifts is more rewarding than receiving gifts. When it comes to critiquing writing and providing feedback, I think it is certainly true that giving is at least as valuable as receiving feedback. Caffarella and Barnett (2000) have made a strong case for this. Their insights are particularly useful for doctoral writing, where providing critique on other authors’ work in progress can be a powerful way for PhD students to learn about their own writing.
I’ve explored the idea of feedback in doctoral writing groups as gift exchange (Mauss 1950/1969) in a forthcoming chapter (reference below), where I found this metaphor a useful tool for understanding the social dynamics of writing groups. Here, however, I want to consider the act of giving on an individual level, rather than in the context of a group.
The value of giving critique was brought home to me recently at a great workshop on peer reviewing run by Rosemary Deem at the Society for Research into Higher Education (SRHE) for early career researchers. During the session, our conversations about how to provide useful and effective peer review returned again and again to reflections on the participants’ own writing. The distinction between reviewing and learning about writing was constantly blurred. It seems that everything we want to advise others to do will also inform how we go about doing our own writing. A virtuous cycle is thus set up between giving and receiving—we give good advice that we can then take on board ourselves.
There is no doubt that everyone learns something about writing from receiving feedback (even if it is to provoke us to defend our choices rather than to change anything in our writing). Many of us have also learnt a great deal about writing from marking essays and being put in the position of having to explain just why that paper should get a B grading instead of an A. Through articulating precisely why one word choice or argument structure is better than another we start to understand what makes writing effective. On the other hand, it can—very importantly—reveal whether that advice is based on what is ‘correct’ or simply our own personal preferences. ‘I just think it sounds better this way’ isn’t a reasoned critique!
Reading and critiquing someone else’s writing is a time-consuming job, however. There may well be occasions when what is learnt is fairly minimal in that it simply serves to remind us of what seems blindingly obvious. In those situations, perhaps the most useful lesson is to confirm that we are on the right path with our own writing efforts.
Nevertheless, the benefits of giving feedback provide a strong enough reason for us to encourage emerging researchers to donate their time to reviewing conference abstracts and journal articles as an important pedagogy in doctoral education (see Michelle Maher on this in a DoctoralWriting blog on 13 September 2013). It’s also yet another very good reason for encouraging doctoral students to join a writing group in which participants give and receive feedback (then again, it’s hard to think of a reason NOT to join a writing group!).
Have you found yourself changing your own writing, or becoming aware of how you might improve your own work, through the process of giving someone else feedback? Has it been a useful exercise for you? What did you learn?
References
Caffarella, R.S., and B.G. Barnett. (2000). Teaching doctoral students to become scholarly writers: The importance of giving and receiving critiques. Studies in Higher Education 25(1): 39-52.
Guerin, C. (forthcoming 2014). The gift of writing groups: Critique, community and confidence. In C. Aitchison & C. Guerin (eds), Writing Groups for Doctoral Education and Beyond: Innovations in Practice and Theory, Abingdon: Routledge.
Mauss, M. (1950/1969). The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies, trans. I. Cunningham, Cohen & West: London.
DoctoralWriting SIG 
I definitely agree with your point that we learn a great deal about feedback by providing it. I’m currently part of a cohort of 20 undertaking an online professional doctorate, and we are each required to peer review two essays submitted by our fellow students. While a great deal is learned from receiving the feedback, we have all commented that the act of having to peer review someone else’s work has been most useful in helping us reflect on our own academic writing.
The process of peer reviewing someone else’s work has definitely helped me improve my own writing process, particularly the need to weed out anything that is not directly related to answering the research question. Peer reviewing has also helped me to structure a piece of academic writing in a more focused manner and ensure that there is a logical flow throughout the paper.
Hi Tony, it sounds like a great program, particularly when you are surrounded by like-minded people who are serious about providing useful feedback to each other. Staying on track in writing is surprisingly hard – it’s so difficult to delete some great idea you’ve had that unfortunately just doesn’t fit the argument structure of the piece. Good on you (and even better for your readers!) for recognising this early. Good luck with the rest of the doctorate.
Most of the feedback I’ve given has been to first year undergraduates or high schoolers, so the standards expected, and writing received, tends to be lower than what a doctoral student like myself aspires to. So, at one level, giving feedback hasn’t been particularly helpful to me. Sometimes, it’s just downright frustrating because some of the students just can’t write academically, and it’s just too time consuming to teach them the basics in your comments, especially when you have to do it over, and over, and over again.
At another level, however, marking such essays reminds me of how it feels to read a lousy essay, and how a reader would feel if I were to write an essay that fell far below the standards expected. Of course, the standards expected in a journal article, for example, and an undergraduate essay, are vastly different, but I think the irritation of reading either in the context of their submission is the same. I wouldn’t want someone reviewing my draft, for example, to feel how I feel when I mark poor undergraduate essays. My point is readability (structuring an argument and communicating it effectively) is every bit as important as the quality of the findings, something that Helen Sword makes in her book on academic writing, and when I give feedback to my students, I’m constantly reminded of that.
On the topic of giving feedback as a gift, I think it’s a great idea. Unfortunately, I find too many of us are robotic in dispensing it, in that although constructive, it’s packaged dispassionately and sometimes, quite curtly. This is amplified when it’s written because the written word allows tone to be misinterpreted. Feedback should build a person up holistically so that the quality of the draft reviewed goes up, as well as the self-esteem and confidence of the person who wrote it. It shouldn’t do the former, but reduce (or in some cases, destroy) the latter. I’ve been told harsh peer review comments are par for the course, and that it’s nothing personal, but really, it’s hard for young scholars to not take things personally. More often than not, we’ve yet to develop thick skin!
So when the gift of feedback is given, please, please watch its tone, and give it nicely. You wouldn’t shove a present into someone’s hand with nary a smile or well-wishes, now would you?
Hi HSH, thanks for your thoughtful comments. I certainly agree that feedback given without any concern for the person receiving that feedback is potentially destructive! Something we all need to keep in mind in this competitive and stressful world of academia… And thanks for the reminder about Helen Sword’s book as a very useful reference point in this context.
Pingback: Seeing feedback and peer review as a gift rather than a curse | How to write a PhD in a hundred steps (or more)