Page 2 - Final Essay Writing II

2013) In my opinion, Laura Reynolds makes a good point about of rubrics. These evaluation tools

useful for both teachers and students because while rubrics help teachers to specify the evaluation
parameters and students to develop a writing according to the established expectations, rubrics also

serves as proof of that there was a prior socialization on how the assignment was to be graded in case

of complaints.

The way that the feedback is given is a good method to help students not to give up on

improving their academic writing. In the article “Considerations of Feedback on Academic Writing in
Post-Secondary Settings”, Joanne Struch wrote that it is important to know how to show students their

mistakes. There are many teachers that remark mistakes with phrases like “What is that?”, “What do

you mean?”, “I can’t understand you” or “This is incorrect”. “These kinds of words could seem
harmless, but for a student who did his best writing something and wait for a good feedback, it could

be devastating.” (Struch, 2015) I agree with Joanne Struch’s main point. She recommends to teachers
focusing on what students have done well. Moreover, it is important that instead of marking the error

and stressing that it is wrong, teachers should suggest a better answer. Phrases like “Maybe you wanted

to say…”, “It can be improved if…”, “It could be better if…” or “You can do it better” can diminish
the impact of a bad-news feedback and help students to improve without feeling disappointed in

themselves.

In conclusion, feedback on academic writing is a hard work because the person in charge of

doing that has to be sure that the content is adequate and makes sense according to the topic, to correct
all the grammatical and orthographic errors, and to do it in the right way to encourage students to

improve without hurting their susceptibility. This is a big responsibility for teachers because of them

depends that students succeed in academic writing and in the whole course. That is why I recommend
using specific rubrics for every assignment and to generate an objective feedback based on content,

style, grammar, punctuation, and references giving examples of each one in order to students improve

their writing and achieve all their learning goals successfully.