0.5 A-reef: effective feedback  (Page 2/3)

• Pointing
• Summarizing

Each are described fully by Peter Elbow in his book called Writing Without Teachers , a book we highly recommend. The excerpts provided here are a useful starting point,especially the section called "Giving Movies of Your Mind," which includes Pointing and Sumarizing.

Element #1 of Effective Feedback

Pointing

Elbow writes:

"Start by simply pointing to the words and phrases which most succcessfully penetrated your skull...somehow they rang true;or they carried special conviction. Any kind of getting through...Also point to any words or phrases which strike you as particularly weak or empty.Somehow they ring false, hollow, plastic. They bounce ineffectually off your skull." (p. 85)

"As a reader giving your reactions, keep in mind that you are not answering a timeless, theorectical question about theobjective qualities of those words on that page. You are answering atime-bound, subjective but factual question: what happened to you when you read the words this time ." (p.85)

Element #2 of Effective Feedback

Summarizing - Tell your Learner "very quickly what you found to be the main points, main feelings, or centers of gravity [in theirwriting]...Summarize into a single sentence; then choose one word...Dothis informally. Don't plan or think too much about it. The point is to show the writer what things he made stand out most in your head." (p. 86)

Examples

How not to give feedback:

In your feedback , do not use words like "good", "great", "nice" or "bad." They are words that do not help a person improve.For example, let's say you wrote a short story and then you gave your short story to a friend or a colleague to read. If that person said, "Hey, that storyyou gave to me to read was really good," you might perk up and feel happy about the compliment, but it does not help you improve as a writer.

Feedback that would be more helpful is as follows:

• "Hey, I read the short story you sent to me. The part where you talked about training your dog made me laugh out loud: 'When I commanded Spiketo give me his paw, he just rolled over, yawned, and gave me his belly to rub.'" (Pointing/Movie of the Mind)
• Another example of effective feedback is: "My mind started to wander when you started talking about the cows. I tuned out for a while and then Iwas listening again when you talked about crossing the river. At the description 'tree branches and rocks swirled past me like a hurricane;the sky darkened to a coal-gray' I could feel my heart starting to pound in my chest." (Pointing/Movie of the Mind)
• An example of "summarizing" might be: "Home. The comfort of home - its foods, smells, the conversations. Home is like an anchor for yourcharacter; it keeps her from drifting off. That's what stays with me after reading your piece."

Responses 1, 2, and 3 from above are more valuable to you than the "good", "nice" or "bad" comments of ineffective feedback becauseyou are receiving specific information about content - how something in your story affected that particular reader at that particulartime (Note: not all readers for all eternity, simply that reader at that time). As the writer, you can then choose to re-write or keep those sectionsthe reader pointed to. That's up to you as the writer. You listen to the feedback and then you have control over what you change or don't change.