Navigating Academic Feedback

30 Oct 2024

Have you ever received feedback on an academic paper that left you feeling more confused or self-conscious than confident? Whether it's a strong critique or an unexpected comment on what you thought you did right, navigating academic feedback can sometimes be challenging. However, keep in mind that everyone has received negative feedback at some point in their academic journey (or rather all throughout it). It is essential that you are open to it, for it helps to identify your strengths and weaknesses, define your writing goals, and, ultimately, reach your fullest potential. It informs you what might be holding your work back from excellence.

The Skills Centre offers professional guidance to not only provide you with feedback but also to help you process that which you have already received. The team of tutors holds a variety of one-to-one appointments that you can book alongside the excellent option to receive Asynchronous Essay Feedback. This is a service where you can send your work to their team which will respond with constructive criticism reviewing the structure and style of your writing. In addition to all those lovely resources, here are some trusted tips to help you effectively use feedback to your benefit:

First of all, try not to take criticism personally – it is there to help you improve. Look at it in a positive light, as a tool to make your work better and to sharpen your abilities. The negative feelings that can come alongside critical feedback are often due to the experience of imposter syndrome and performative comparison to others which is very present in university settings. But criticism of your work is not a personal attack on your capabilities and is not there to create or affirm insecurities or lower you on a scale against others. All that comes with university is, after all, a learning experience. Therefore, you are expected to grow and to improve your performance and writing so give yourself some leverage!

Don’t just focus on the negatives. Positive feedback is just as important as it tells you what to continue doing in your work. It keeps you motivated and enhances the feelings of accomplishment. Obsessing over your weak points really benefits nothing.

Engage actively with the feedback you get. Don’t just skim over it to get a quick grasp of why you got that specific grade. Read the suggestions properly and consequently read over the assignment you submitted. Many professors actually comment on particular moments throughout your text to help demonstrate the reasoning for their criticism or to highlight good, strong passages. Also, if the feedback seems unclear, go talk to your professor and ask for clarification. This makes feedback more engaging and understandable, and can prevent misconceptions. Office hours are there for a reason.

Consider your development so far. Read over your past assignments and the following feedback to gain a more holistic awareness of how your abilities have evolved. Assessment shouldn’t be a passive line of submissions but a graduate progression. This can also be a nice confidence booster when you need a pick-me up after some criticism – look at how far you’ve come already! If you get certain suggestions repeatedly, write them out on a sticky note on your desk to help you stay aware of them when you are working on the next assignment. A great practice is also to rewrite or reformulate a finished assignment based on the feedback you received . Yes, this is time-consuming, but it’s a good exercise to help you evolve academically.

Try to incorporate peer review and personal feedback. Ask yourself: How do I think I did in this assignment? Then compare that to your professor’s opinion. This helps strengthen your independence in assessing your work. Ask your friends for their opinion on your work’s structure, language, and clarity of argument, not just whether you had overlooked any grammatical mistakes. Also, read over their essays in return. Everyone has a different perspective and approach to writing and you will most likely learn a lot. Furthermore, this is a great levelling exercise as the texts you encounter most in university are written by experts in the field which is an entirely different level than yours (especially concerning undergraduate students), so reading your peers’ work helps identify your standard.

On Thursday 31^st Oct at 10am, the Skills Centre are also holding their workshop Making Feedback Work For You in their classroom in Q-1 Boole Library.

Look at your mistakes as challenges. Academic writing is very sophisticated, and it is expected that it will take time to learn its ways, so keep your head up and just keep trying your best. Thank you for reading, and best of luck!