Critical Reflection: The Role of Peer and Tutor Feedback
Throughout the whole course of ES1102, we are required to provide feedbacks to our peers and at the same time receive feedbacks from our peers and tutor. The role of peer and tutor feedback in the course is extremely important as constructive comments not only help us identify mistakes that we are oblivious to, it also improves our writing.
This feedback system encourages us to read our peer's blog posts regularly and critically evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of their responses and essays. The need to evaluate my peer's essays gave me a clearer idea of what a good essays should possess which in turn helped to improve my way of writing. This is because I learn to craft and judge my own essay according to the guidelines of writing a good essay, such as the rubrics. Furthermore, by reading my peer's blog posts, it exposed me to different perspectives such as how a common topic like digital divide is prevalent in different communities which many of us were ignorant of.
To me, though providing feedbacks to my peers benefited me, I felt that receiving feedbacks from my peers and tutor contributed most to my improvement. It was always nice to know that people are reading an essay that I have put so much effort in. The encouragement and compliments I have received from my peers and tutor motivated me to keep up with the workload. The constructive comments given after my blog post allowed me to learn instantly and interactively. Feedbacks are extremely important because it allows the writer to understand how successful he/she managed to bring his central idea across to his readers. In my case, I tend to summarize more after each draft because I have became more knowledgeable about the content of my essay and I felt that explanations were redundant and self-explanatory. I failed to realize how excessive summarizing would affect my overall cohesiveness of my essays as many details are missing and my first-time readers would not see the logical flow of points the way that I do. Hence, this feedback system allows me to improve my way of writing by making sure that my essay is detailed and yet concise.
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Feedback is really important! I am glad that we are all contributing to each other's growth during this course. I agree that it is a warm feeling, knowing that there are others reading your hours of labour. This is unlike in secondary schools or polytechnics, whereby only the lecturer reads and grades our essay.
ReplyDeleteYou brought your "central idea" across very well! Your reflection is very clear.
Thank you, Xenia, for this thorough critical reflection. You do a fine job of reviewing the feedback component of our course and the way that receiving and giving feedback is of value. We readers can understand easily from this essay that you value having had the opportunity to develop your writing through such feedback. I'm glad you found great benefit in that. My only question is whether you think it would be practical to solicit feedback from a friend or classmate for an essay you have written for another course.
ReplyDeleteThere are also some lingering verb tense and s-v agreement problems in this post. Do you see the problems when you reread this?
Despite those minor details, I found this reflection to be a very personalized. I have clearly seen improvement in your writing over the course of the term. Now, Xenia, I wish you 'happy trails' as you continue your learning journey!
Hi Xenia!
ReplyDeleteI do agree with you that the feedback we receive motivates us to write more! We know that there are always people reading our work and providing us feedback allowing us to further improve.
Thank you!
Diyanah
Thank you Joleen! Nice use of the 'central idea' :D
ReplyDeleteThank you Diyanah! I'm glad you feel the same too! :)
ReplyDeleteThank you Mr Brad! I'll come back with a better draft! :)
ReplyDelete