Between Praise and Criticism:  The Power of Teacher Feedback
By MaryAnn K. Crawford, Director, Writing Center, Central Michigan University

Much has been written about the efficacy of teacher feedback:  it’s important, it’s good; students want it; they complain if don’t receive it quickly enough.  In a similar vein, positive reinforcement has long been accepted as promoting learning.  Yet, some now question giving praise, indicating that it can have a negative, if unintended, effect by fostering dependency rather than motivation. This leaves us teachers doing a balancing act between praise and criticism. 

After all, teachers have to believe that what they say and write has the power to create change in the students they teach.  Why else would we bother to lecture, talk, write; why else teach?  Traditionally, we have emphasized the information, the “what,” that students needed to grasp, and our feedback focused on errors students made about that information.  But the more we learn about the way language functions, the more we realize that words generate reactions and those reactions may determine whether or not learning will occur.  “How” becomes as important as “what” when it comes to giving feedback for learning, and this has become increasingly evident – and important – when teaching with technology.  Online we rely on the written word, naked of tone and facial expression, to get ideas across and to give feedback that, we hope, will result in learning. 

I share the following four sections as a way of thinking further about the kind of feedback you give students.  Section one focuses on questions for self-reflection.  Then, I share a sample student paper with a teacher’s comments and ask you to think about “what” the teacher notices to comment on, relative to how these comments are posed, the “how.”  Section three asks you to gauge your own reactions to “how” by ranking comments from most to least positive.  I hope these will both intrigue and encourage you to actively think about the language you use in giving feedback.  Finally, I leave you with positive comments that students offered as being motivating. 

1.  Food for thought:  Reflect on the following; if possible, write out your responses, quickly and freely.  Often the best insights come in the process of our initial writing – ideas exposing themselves through our fingers.

1. “We catch more flies with honey than with vinegar”   Do you think this is true with regard to teacher feedback/comments? 

2. Recall feedback you’ve received and/or given to students about assignments.  What metaphor(s) for teacher comments comes to mind? (Are these positive?  Negative?)

3. Why do you comment on students assignments/papers? 

4. What do you want students to DO with them?

5. How do we want students to FEEL about them?  (or do/should you care?)

6. Why do students want comments?  Is this different from what teachers want? 

2.  What v. How, One Instructor’s Feedback:  Below is a first year college student paper (a draft) written in/for a combined history and writing course.2  The assignment was to write a 650-900 word paper that clearly stated a claim and supported the claim with information from an article.  “Prompt chosen:  Drawing on Charles Mee’s ‘How a Mysterious Disease Laid Low Europe’s Masses,’ describe medieval European society in the 14th century and explain how it was changed as a result of the plague.”  

As you read, note what the instructor chooses to comment on as well as how those comments are phrased.  How effective do you think the comments will be in helping the student revise the paper?  Will the student know what is expected?  Will the student be better able to write the next paper of this type?  My analysis suggests that while the instructor is focusing on items that the student should change, the framing of these comments are predominantly negative; that is they focus on what the student did “not” do rather than on what the student did or should have done (other than start over perhaps).  I have included only the beginning and ending paragraphs, but the whole paper reflects very similar feedback patterns. 

One-Third of Europe Killed by Fleas

* Professor Comments designated in RED.

In Mee’s article [COMMA AFTER “ARTICLE”]How a Mysterious Disease Laid Low Europe’s Masses [NEED QUOTATION MARKS], it depicts how the Bubonic Plague took the lives of one-third of Europe’s people.  Todays [APOSTROPHE] scientists believe that the bubonic plague was started when rats interacted with humans in trading ports.  These rats which were infested with fleas, [USE BOTH COMMAS] has a bacteria called (not at the time) [BRACKETS NOT PARENTHESES] Yersinia pestis.  When word spread that a disease had started to take the lives of many people, the townsmen and women started to lock up their towns and communities from people coming in and out.  [THIS INFO ISN’T REALLY NECESSARY] During this time period, there was an incline [“INCREASE” MAYBE?] in economical [YOU DON’T NEED THE “-AL”] standards for townships.  To this day there has not been a more single disease [I THINK YOU MEAN “A SINGLE MORE DEVASTATING DISEASE” OR SOMETHING TO THAT EFFECT.  WHAT YOU’VE WRITTEN MAKES NO SENSE TO ME] to top the Black Plague. . . .        

Since there were so many bad things going for the Europeans at the time, there had to be something good going for them.  Since there was so many people [“WAS” IS SINGULAR, “PEOPLE” IS PLURAL] dying at the time, there was room to better one’s self through employment.  People could get jobs, only because there were spots opening up, [PUNCTUATION] from the people dying.  This caused better [I THINK YOU MEAN “MORE” NOT “BETTER.”  THEY DIDN’T HAVE POOR QUALITY LUXURIES, THEN GET BETTER QUALITY ONES; THEY DIDN’T HAVE MANY (OR ANY) THEN FINALLY GOT SOME.] luxuries for the common man or woman.   There is a flip side to this though, since most of the people lives or worked on farms, and there were so many people dying, there was nobody to work on the farms.  This cause agriculture to go way down, and some towns found themselves with food shortages  (Mee 188).

The Black Plague caused great reform [YOU’VE SAID VERY LITTLE ABOUT “REFORM.”  DEFINE IT, EXPLAIN IT, GIVE ME SOME EXAMPLES OF IT] in Europe.  Many people died because of this tragic fate.  Many people turned to religion for answers, [THIS IS A MAJOR WAY THE PLAGUE CHANGED EUROPE – WORTH AT LEAST A PARAGRAPH OR TWO.] and never found them, but there was nothing God could do for them.  Maybe God wanted to punish the people of Europe or maybe it was just fate that it should have happened.  No one knows for sure, but we do know this, that the Black plague was one of the most horrible things ever to hit this earth, and we pray that nothing like that should ever happen again.

[EDDY, MOST OF MY COMMENTS FOCUS ON MECHANICAL ERRORS BECAUSE (1) YOU MUST MEET A CERTAIN BASELINE OF CORRECTNESS OR YOU WONT PASS ANYWAY, AND (2) YOU BASICALLY MISSED THE POINT OF THE QUESTION.  YOU TOLD ME ABOUT THE PLAGUE AS A DISEASE (I.E., WHAT CAUSED IT AND HOW PEOPLE TRIED TO “TREAT” IT), BUT YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO TELL HOW IT CHANGED EUROPE.  I RECOMMEND THAT YOU KEEP THE FIRST THREE SENTENCES OF YOUR CLOSING PARAGRAPH AS PART OF YOUR INTRODUCTION, BUT CUT EVERYTHING ELSE.  FOCUS ON THE REFORMS – WHAT THEY WERE AND WHY THEY HAPPENED.  (SEE ME IF YOU NEED HELP GETTING STARTED ON YOUR REVISION.)

3.  Reacting to “How”:  Reflecting further on your own reaction to the instructor’s comments above, put yourself in “Eddy’s” shoes and label the comments in terms of the degree of criticism you might feel: strongly negative (/-), neutral (=), positive (+).   What are your results?  Do you think these results would be similar for an (imagined or real) colleague?  For another student?  If you have time, ask someone else to evaluate; sharing the results helps us understand the differences in “uptake” on comments. For example, do you think that women might react differently than men?  Might responses be different if this were a “Nancy” instead of “Eddy”?

 4.  Ranking Our Reactions:  For the following list of items, rank the comments below from most positive to least positive.  While these are outside a context of use, they are not untypical and show how the language we use for framing our intentions still garner feelings and reactions. 

1. I think you’re on the right track, but let’s work on…___     
2. I enjoyed reading your paper. ___
3. I like this… ___
4. I really like this part, but it should be developed more thoroughly. ___
5. Your paper is interesting. ___     
6. Interesting!  I never thought of it that way! ___
7. This ___ is exactly right. ___
8. Excellent point! ___
9. This doesn’t address the question/assignment. ___
10. You have good ideas but need to proofread more closely. ___
11. Evidence?___
12. Comma here. ___
13. This is difficult to read. ___
14. This doesn’t tell me anything. ___
15. This is irrelevant. ___

5.  “20 Ways to Give Positive Feedback”:  Finally, I would like to leave you with samples of positive comments offered by the Writing Center student consultants – the kind of comments they themselves like to hear and receive.  While there are certainly times when teachers need to give criticism and would be irresponsible if we didn’t, we might also remember to balance criticism with the power of positive comments that, used judiciously, encourage student “uptake” for the changes and learning that we want to instill. 

1. I’m liking your ideas.
2. I think you’re on the right track, but let’s work on…
3. You’ve done well with keeping your language academic.
4. That is a very solid thesis.
5. I enjoyed reading your paper.
6. I really like this part and I think it could be expanded upon.
7. Keep telling me more.
8. I’m looking forward to reading this!
9. Your _____ is really strong.
10. I like the way you ____.
11. You sure know a lot about (topic).
12. You are very passionate about your topic.
13. I think you have a lot of really good/interesting ideas here.
14. I am really interested in this idea.  Is there more you could say about it?
15. Great observation.
16. Beautiful use of concrete evidence!
17. I like how you connected with the reading in this paragraph.
18. I like the way you integrated some of what we talked about last week.
19. I really like this idea.  I’ve never thought of that!
20. You have a unique perspective here; I appreciate your insight.

Note: 

See, for example: Kohn, Alfie.  “Five Reasons to Stop Saying ‘Good Job.’”  Young Children, September 2001.  Retrieved, 8/30/2007, www.alfiekohn.org/parenting/gh.htm.

2 From:  Straub, Richard. The Practice of Response:  Strategies for Commenting on Student Writing.  Cresskill, NJ:  Hampton Press. 2000.  107-112.