Abstract

Starting from an analysis of the characteristics of "satisfactory" and "excellent" student writing, we argue that much of the feedback currently provided to students is actively counter-productive. Improvement in student achievement requires a change in how these students view university, their instructors, and the role of writing, rather than additional instruction in either the subject content or the mechanics of paper composition. For example, we argue that the most crucial feature of writing at the marginally "satisfactory" level is the absence of "ownership": many undergraduates believe that they "have to give the professor what s/he wants hear". It is this (mis)understanding of the university context which denies students ownership of their papers, and so ultimately undermines their potential for learning and achievement. Consequently, changes are needed in the way we structure and grade assignments to allow these students to take their own voice seriously and to develop the other metacognitions necessary to achieve excellence.

Introduction

Many university instructors devote long hours to marking, often taking great pains to provide students with thoughtful, substantive feedback. Unfortunately, these comments are usually written from the instructor's perspective, not the student's. Unless instructors have a clear understanding of their students' frame of reference, they will be unable to provide feedback which is meaningful to, or useable by, the student. For many students, perhaps even the majority, our careful, time consuming critique of their work is simply so much wasted effort. Indeed, for weaker students, it may actually prove to be counter-productive.

In this paper we wish to accomplish three things: to identify the characteristics that distinguish successful from less successful student work; to relate these categories to the students' frame of reference; and to suggest some simple changes that would allow instructors to provide more student-oriented assignments and feedback. We believe that changing from instructor-centric to student-oriented feedback would significantly increase both teaching effectiveness and student success.

Understanding Differences In Student Approaches

As instructors, we tend to focus our feedback on specific course content, or perhaps some aspect of the student's written communication: flaws in grammar, structure, organization, and so on.

Both groups of students receive the same type of advice from markers, but only the first group, the minority of high achievers, can actually take full advantage of marker feedback. The second group lacks the context in which to correctly interpret the feedback they receive, and even if they could, it is usually not the feedback they need. Although these students may also have weaknesses related to course content and written expression, their more fundamental need is for feedback addressed to the level of their metacognitions. To succeed, these students need to change their basic approach to the writing task, to be able re reorient themselves to each new specific assignment, to take ownership of their voice and ideas, to feel safe to take more risks, to be able to tolerate more ambiguity, and so on. Yet these are not the issues on which marker feedback is generally focused.

To understand the context in which students approach each new assignment, it may be useful to examine the common characteristics of successful and less successful student writing. A study of student written work on Alberta's school-leaving examinations in English and Social Studies turned up an unexpected result: Students producing "satisfactory" work (a "3" on Alberta's 5 point marking scale) seem to adopt the same approach regardless of subject or task. There were startling similarities in how these students approached a topic, put ideas together, and used language. Features of "excellent" work (papers receiving a 5 out of 5) were also similar from subject to subject.* Alberta teachers subsequently began to refer to the qualities of "3ness" and "5ness" that distinguished "satisfactory" and "excellent" papers respectively. Analysis of these characteristics yielded four major themes or dimensions: ownership, ambiguity, risk-taking, and specificity. These findings are summarized in Table 1,.

Although issues of confidentiality prevent us from directly quoting student papers, it may be useful to reconstruct two examples to illustrate some of the characteristics of "3ness" and "5ness". Typically, a paper exhibiting qualities of "3ness" will begin its discussion of, say MacBeth, with an opening sentence such as:

In the great play MacBeth by that great playwright Shakespeare we see just how really great Shakespeare (the greatest playwright in the English language — maybe in any language ever!) was, because it is a really fantastically great play.

Table 1: Qualities of "3ness" and "5ness"

Quality	Level of Achievement
	(3) Satisfactory	(5) Excellent
Ownership	Lack of ownership Little depth of thought or internalization of idea Inflated language, attempt to impress, trying to enter a relatively foreign world of thought and language without really having the keys. May rely on what seems to belong in that world (inflated language, for example) but that is not connected to the writer Confident, but not engaged Lack of ownership of idea and language	Desire to accept ownership Originality within a defensible context Ownership of idea; writers are engaged with their ideas and the material Ideas are the writerÕs own and have merit Personal voice, but not inappropriate; these writers speak as themselves and believe that their ideas merit discussion Appreciative of the material under discussion
Ambiguity	Comfort with absolutes Need to "nail things down' in concrete black and white termsÑa need for absolutes Little acknowledgment of ambivalences, dilemma, ambiguity, uncertainty, possibility, inconclusiveness, subtlety Judgmental and/or moralizing (perhaps moral judgment to these thinkers is a substitute for exploration of idea; it may justify the exercise) Information is skewed or manipulated to fit a formula, form, or limited ideaÑnot internalized or interpreted	Comfort with ambiguity Aware of subtlety Value and seek out irony, ambiguity, intricacy, contradiction, ambivalence Argue balanced positions (not only/but also this/but that) Do not attempt to resolve or judge paradox or areas of gray, yet acknowledge and understand these complexities Do not seek absolute closure; comfortable with open-endedness, unfinished business
Risk-taking	Need for certainty Reluctance to explore Sincere Determination to do what has been asked Methodical, mechanical approach	Need for exploration Willing to take risks Comfortable with exploring ideas in their complexity, not seeking narrow, literal, defined right answers Able to set a context, redefine topic
Specificity	Need to assert/generalize Generalized language, ideas, information Apparently no need to elaborate, explain, or develop	Ability to support/specify Apply knowledge, evaluate, analyze, and relate "show" rather than "tell"

In contrast, the "excellent" papers generally take an original, and occasionally contrary, position on what has been taught. A typical "excellent" paper might start by complaining that MacBeth is over-rated compared to Shakespeare's other tragedies, and that the standard interpretation entirely misses the significance of the symbolism of the witches. The "excellent" student takes risks, and is confident that the marker will reward such risk-taking. Reading these essays one knows that these students have internalized both the play and its meaning: they have made MacBeth their own.

For example, one year the examination asked students to discuss the theme of "alienation" in literature. One student chose the poem "Examiner" to illustrate his argument. This already indicates a willingness to take risks, because poetry is almost always more difficult for students to interpret than a prose piece. Furthermore, it was a unique and daring selection. The poem the student argued, is about the alienation felt by a teacher who is forced to proctor an examination, but who sees himself doing to his students what the gardener outside his window is doing to the grass: scything it to an even height. At one level, the paper was a straightforward discussion of a poem that met all the requirements of the question posed; but at another level, the student had built in a complete subtext, that of blowing a giant raspberry to the examiners marking the paper. Pretty sophisticated stuff for a Grade 12 student writing first draft in an hour and a half examination. The teacher-markers loved it. They gave the paper the highest mark in the province. And yet, we would not be surprised to learn the student had left the exam with a certain amount of trepidation, perhaps even thinking, "They're going to crucify me."

Although the characteristics outlined in Table 1 were derived from an analysis of school-leaving examinations, they are likely to have considerable resonance with anyone teaching at a post-secondary institution. Table 1 essentially describes the range of student writers that constitutes the universities' intake. In other words, the Diploma Examinations provide the "before picture", the starting point from which students enter the university system.

If our purpose is simply to sort students from best to worst, to certify success and failure, then our current grading practices will appear to do the job well. That portion of our intake that arrives as "excellent" students will continue to be able to analyze and refine their work in light of marker feedback, while less successful "satisfactory" students will slowly drown in a sea of incomprehensible red ink. If, on the other hand, our purpose is to allow all students to achieve to their highest potential, then our current system is inadequate and does a disservice to the "satisfactory" portion of our intake. Although these "satisfactory" students arrive with the minimum skills upon which to build a successful professional or university career, they are more likely to be ground down by well intentioned but misdirected feedback that fails to address their needs. We need, therefore, to develop a better understanding of the student's frame of reference, particularly as it applies to the potentially successful but struggling "C" student. In the following section, we suggest some of the issues which may intrude between the feedback provided by the marker and the student's ability to interpret it. In the concluding section, we will then recommend some simple changes to assignment design and marking practices to help students overcome these misconceptions and so produce the better work of which they are capable.

Student (Mis)Perceptions of Written Assignments & Feedback

A fundamental weakness of many of the students entering university at the "satisfactory" level is their lack of any sense of ownership or voice in their approach to written work. There are several aspects to this problem.

Giving the Instructor What S/He Wants to Hear (Content)

How does one convince students that they do not need to agree with the instructor to do well in a discussion course? Whenever students are challenged to take ownership for their assignments and write what they truly believe, the vast majority complain that their past experiences have shown that to do so is to take unacceptable risks. One must, they argue, agree with the instructor's opinions or pay a heavy penalty.

This nearly universal perception on the part of students does not accord with the experiences of most instructors, who generally feel they bend over backwards to accommodate other viewpoints. Similarly, there are always a few top students who will attest that that no one has ever failed them for disagreeing with their professors --- and that they routinely play devil's advocate and attack all their instructors' pet theories because they find arguing against a known position helps to focus their own thinking. Have these students been outrageously lucky in their selection of courses and instructors, or are all these other students wrong when they claim they have to "suck up" to do well? What we have seen at the high school level, what we know happens there because we have been part of the team that designs the exams, that trains and supervises the markers, and then does follow-up research, is that the students who do the best almost never spout the party line. On the other hand, there may be just enough truth in the students' fears to perpetuate this paranoia. We all have our suspicions about one or two of our more opinionated colleagues, and it is quite possible that a few bad apples could be tarring the reputation of the entire professorate. More likely, however, is that we are all a bit biased, whatever our intentions. We may think we are basing our marking entirely on the sophistication of the student's analysis, but it is obviously easier for them to be sophisticated if they base their approaches on sophisticated theorists; that is, those with whom the marker agrees. Students can adopt a contrary position and do well, but only if they address the weaknesses inherent in the out - of - favour theory, or anticipate and refute the instructors' potential counter arguments; only, in other words, if the student does more work than one who simply reiterates the positions with which the marker agrees.

We suspect, then, that what is happening is that stronger students do best when they demonstrate their independence of thought by taking the instructor on; while weaker students' papers collapse under the rigorous examination that follows their adoption of an unpopular position. Weaker writers who toe the party line get mediocre marks for lack of originality but are accepted as basically correct. Stronger students who adopt the party line do better than weak writers, but not as well as they could have done had they written from their heart. The instructors and top students are then confirmed in their belief that the system is completely fair, while the lower students learn that schooling is about compliance and conformity.

Giving the Instructor What S/He Wants to Hear (Process)

It should come as no surprise that many students believe that they have to conform to the arbitrary and idiosyncratic demands of their instructors when no one has ever explained to them that different disciplines, traditions, and paradigms may call for different approaches to the writing task. The student who has successfully internalized the post-modernist concern that writing preserve the voice of those quoted with as little interference by the author as possible, is likely to be frustrated by the business instructor who declares that s/he "stopped reading after the second page because no executive summary should be longer than a 1000 words". The business student is similarly confounded when told by the comparative literature professor that a concise two-page summary of complex material is unacceptable because it lacks sufficient embellishment and fails to allow for a multiplicity of discourses. Over generalizing the feedback received in one course to assignments in other disciplines where the advice may not apply, students naturally conclude that these contradictory directives reflect the personal prejudices of individual instructors rather than systematic differences between disciplines.

Indeed, many university teachers, isolated within a departmental organization that restricts their interactions to colleagues within their own or related disciplines, may themselves be only vaguely aware that other departments require significantly different approaches to written assignments. Secure in the knowledge that all their close colleagues stress the same attributes, many instructors do not even articulate these criteria for students ahead of time, but simply dock marks after the fact for any deviation from their discipline's implicit standards. Because grading criteria are not made explicit, and explicitly linked to the particular assumptions of the discipline that provide their rationale (or at least their history), students have no basis on which to predict these hidden criteria.

When students experience variations in the writing task as something imposed by the instructor, rather than as defined by the logical requirements of particular applications, they have no basis on which to make informed decisions for themselves. Instead of being provided a set of tools from which they could reasonably choose the most appropriate tool for the task at hand, they are left with the mistaken impression that all writing tasks are the same, and it is only the instructor that changes. It should be obvious that it is impossible for students to take ownership of their writing if they feel its characteristics are arcane and dictated by the instructor.

Giving the Instructor What S/He Asked For

Paradoxically, when instructors are clear about the disciplined-based requirements for their assignments, many students at the "3" level take the directions too literally. Instead of producing an integrated and coherent argument, they mechanically reproduce the assignment structure or scoring rubric, often even adopting the descriptors from the rubric as their topic headings. Such methodical approaches do allow limited success, because it is clear to both the student and instructor that the student has met the assignment's minimum requirements. This approach is further reinforced by reasonable success in those course components (such as labs) where essay-style integration is not required. Their unwillingness to take risks, to bring their own out-of-course knowledge to bear, or to push the envelope, however, restricts their grades to the "C" and "B" ranges. For students who religiously follow the structures set out in the assignment, it is frustrating to be told that they received only a minimal pass because they "failed to go beyond" the requirements as set out in the assignment. "Tell me what you want," they complain, "and I'll do it!"

Writing "Like an Academic"

A somewhat related problem is that in trying to enter the relatively foreign world of academic discourse, many students fixate on the tropes without understanding their substance. The most obvious and most frequently encountered example is the inflated diction of students who lack confidence in their own voice. Faced with readings that appear nearly incomprehensible, students often strive to make their own writing sound equally important. In attempting to emulate this supposed academic style, they often sacrifice what clarity of thought and language was available to them.

Similarly, some students adopt the stylistic devices of particular paradigms -- such as the jargon and rhetoric of post-modernism, Marxism, feminist critique -- without mastering the content that underlies these specialized discourses. Fending off constructive feedback with accusations of marker bias, they often fail to improve.

Writing to the Instructor

Because students know that the instructor is only person to read their paper, they often mistakenly treat their assignment as a personal communication, rather than as an essay intended for "publication". This unfortunate confusion of formats often undermines student success. Weaker students are unlikely to grasp the importance of specificity, for example, when their only audience is the professor, whose assumed expertise in the subject seems to the student to make it unnecessary, and perhaps even presumptuous, to provide supporting detail. Similarly, students occasionally document their process -- listing every book read and web site viewed in the order in which they were encountered, describing how each draft has been revised in light of new insights, and asserting how much they have learned -- without actually making a coherent argument or directly answering the question posed.

Instructional Implications:
Moving Students Beyond "Satisfactory" Writing

We have argued that the most crucial feature of writing at "3" level is the absence of "ownership". If our diagnosis is correct, then the question becomes, how can our instruction encourage and develop independence of thought and internalization of ideas so that the ideas are meaningful to the student? How can we encourage students to value their own ideas and have confidence in the worth of those ideas? How can we move students from simply replicating the ideas or language of others to expressing themselves clearly and thoughtfully in their own voices? How can our instruction encourage students to explore ideas and develop confidence and comfort with open-endedness and unresolved problems or issues?

Increasing Ownership by Diversifying Opportunities for Writing

It should come as no surprise that many university students see term papers as a strictly academic exercise with no connection to their own lives or needs. What originated in the elite universities of another era as a way to prepare scholars for the world of academic publishing has turned into the default undergraduate assignment, one that is of questionable relevance in the modern, mass multiversity. It is often difficult to rationalize a connection between the ability to apply, say, correct APA format, and the graduate's future role as a music teacher, dentist, or forestry worker. Undergraduates in professional faculties may well be justified in complaining that the traditional term paper is not particularly relevant to their needs. There may be more appropriate written assignments for assessing content knowledge or students' writing and thinking skills in applied disciplines. If we want students to take more ownership of their writing, the first step may be to allow them greater choice in the format that writing takes.

An effective writer owns the ideas, believes in what he or she has to say, and is aware of an obligation to communicate to the reader. Most undergraduate students, however, write on topics chosen by their instructors for an audience of one (the instructor), and consequently feel little commitment to either the topic or to the opinions they are expressing for the benefit of the marker. Allowing students to freely choose any topic relevant to the course content may significantly increase student ownership. Equally important is providing students with a real audience. Assignments that are to be shared with peers or the public are likely to increase student ownership, and to decrease the tendency to "suck up" to the instructor.

One obvious example of a modern alternative to traditional term paper format that also provides students with a real audience is publishing on the world wide web. A number of instructors, especially in issue oriented courses, have already experienced considerable success by having groups of students mount a web page related to one of the issues discussed in the course. Knowing that their work is "going public", students take greater ownership for both the content and their ability to communicate it. Although no one would suggest that a web page assignment can assess all of the skills (such as sustained argument) served by a traditional term paper, neither can it be denied that these new communication technologies require new skills (such as non-linear connectedness, layout and graphic design, greater succinctness) that our graduates should also possess. Forcing all students to produce web pages in every course would be as dysfunctional as insisting that term papers are the only appropriate format for undergraduate writing. Rather, written assignments need to be matched as closely as possible to the learning objectives for the particular course.

Increasing Ownership, Risk-Taking, Specificity, and Tolerance for Ambiguity by Clarifying Criteria

We have argued that it is impossible for students to take ownership of their writing, take risks, or tolerate ambiguity so long as they view the instructor as the locus of control. Somewhat paradoxically, the best way of resolving these problems is to make scoring criteria more explicit and to involve students in their creation. Detailed scoring rubrics serve several purposes.

First, they allow instructors to mark more objectively. By frequently referring back to the scoring rubric, and matching the characteristics of the paper in front of them to these descriptors, the marker is more likely to disregard irrelevant factors that might otherwise bias their assessment. Explicit reference to the descriptors can also be made in the feedback to the students, so that students can confirm that the assessment matched the assignment criteria. By being able to review the descriptors and confirm the assessment of their paper, students are more likely to take responsibility for the grade they have earned, rather than see it as the result of chance or marker bias.

Second, by making the scoring criteria explicit and distributing these rubrics before hand, there are no surprises for students. Students are less likely to inappropriately apply the lessons learned in one discipline or paradigm to another if each course instructor is explicit about their own expectations. More importantly, it forces instructors to examine their own assumptions and hidden criteria, as students can challenge marker's comments that do not correspond to the official rubric. At a minimum, the perceived locus of control is moved from the idiosyncratic and unpredictable biases of individual instructors to the objective application of the scoring rubric. In other words, given explicit criteria for the assignment, it becomes obvious that the nature of the writing task itself differs from paper to paper, and that students need to adapt their approach to accommodate different writing tasks rather than to accommodate the instructors.

Third, once the focus shifts from the instructor to the writing task, it becomes possible to explain the rationale behind the specific demands of each discipline, school, or paradigm. Better yet, by involving students in the actual creation of scoring criteria, we can give them a wider perspective and deeper understanding of the discipline in question. In so doing we help to develop student metacognition.

Before students can be said to have ownership of their writing they must not only know what to do, but also why they are doing it. As students are taught why particular approaches best suit the requirements of particular contexts, they are able to build up a toolkit of writing techniques and devices from which they can choose the most appropriate for any specific task. Given ownership of this variable repertoire, students can begin to take more risks, combining and recombining techniques until they achieve a synthesis that represents their own voice over a much wider range of writing tasks.

Of course, in structuring the writing task, the instructor may also be able to address the issues of ambiguity and specificity. Understanding the relationship between the discipline and the writing task, students are less likely to attribute arbitrary motives to instructors, and therefore they are less paranoid about identifying the "correct" answer. And, by specifying the degree of supporting evidence required for successful completion of undergraduate assignments, one can model and enforce a level of specificity that might not occur spontaneously. Students can be directed to "show not tell", to make connections explicit, and to organize information by classifying and categorizing. Building on student strengths, one moves students from unconsciousness through consciousness to automaticity.

On the other hand, it is important not to structure the assignment to such a degree that it erodes student ownership. While we all recognize the importance of pre-writing, outlining and drafting to establish context -- situation, purpose, and audience -- for students, one should resist the impulse to teach any one correct approach to the writing process. We have all had the experience of students turning in polished essays, apologizing that they "haven't had a chance to get to the idea web and point outline yet, but will have them ready for next Monday, if that's okay." Clearly, our purpose must be to provide students with a set of useable tools, not to impose an arbitrary set of hoops that bear little relation to the student's actual process.

Similarly, since students at the "3" level often structure their papers to mechanically follow the categories as listed in the scoring rubric, it is important to indicate when analytically distinct elements are intended to be combined into an integrated whole.

Increasing Ownership of Language and Voice

We have argued that faced with required readings that seem to feature inflated language, hopelessly long or convoluted sentence structures, and a general mind-numbing density, students often try to emulate this style by overly complicating their own writing. Far from teaching undergraduates how to become clear writers, the readings set before them often do a disservice by modeling the worst excesses of academic publishing. Pompous, exclusionary and above all boring, much of what is published in academic journals and texts is inexcusably badly written. No matter how seminal the article, undergraduates should not be afflicted with such writing when there are usually better written sources available. Readings should be carefully selected to challenge and stretch undergraduates, but not overwhelm them.

Where it is considered absolutely necessary to expose students to seminal but poorly written material, the writing, as well as the content, should be placed in an appropriate context. Take, for example, the infamously bad writing of American sociologist Talcott Parsons. No undergraduate should be exposed to this important figure without first being told that Parsons completed his graduate work in Germany, and so retained German syntax even when writing in English. The simple recognition that they are engaged in an act of translation helps undergraduate readers negotiate the convoluted style and also suggests that this is not a style they should seek to emulate. It should be further explained that as one of the founders of modern sociology, Parsons was often driven to obscure the field's initially mundane observations in a sea of redundant jargon. The jargon Parsons created helped distinguish the new discipline from the social philosophers who went before, a crucial step in the creation of a separate sociology department within the university. Deconstructing the political and sociological purposes behind Parson's abominable style allows students to be critical of Parsons' impenetrable writing and so retain confidence in the simple clarity of their own voice.

Increasing Tolerance for Ambiguity by Increasing Ambiguity

The selection of readings should also strive to increase the students tolerance for ambiguity by providing a balanced presentation of differing views. Many instructors are successful using books of readings in which opposing views are argued in successive chapters. As students complete each reading, are convinced by it, they are immediately confronted by an equally convincing refutation, which is itself overturned in the third reading. If the instructor is cautious not to editorialize as students progress through such materials, students generally develop a critical stance in which each new reading is approached with the implicit question "I wonder what the loop holes are in this argument." Once "authoritative" statements are accepted as limited, tentative, and open to revision, these students may themselves move away from absolute pronouncements.*

Conclusion

If the range exhibited by freshman writers is that described in Table 1, then one purpose of undergraduate education must be to move those who enter at the "3" level to the "5" category. Table 2 presents a checklist of the preconditions necessary for students to achieve beyond satisfactory writing.

Table 2: Instructional Focus

The Importance of Establishing an Appropriate State of Mind A willingness to take personal ownership of ideas A feeling of confidence that these ideas are worthwhile/important A desire to communicate these ideas meaningfully A feeling of acceptance of ambiguity/paradox/dilemma The Importance of Pre-writing, Outlining, and Drafting (Establishing Situation, Purpose and Audience) An understanding of and a comfort with the topic An ability to formulate and maintain a controlling idea An awareness of readers' needs and a willingness to meet those needs The Importance of Providing Details for the Reader An ability to "show" rather than merely "tell" The Importance of Organizing Information An ability to abstract (categorize, classify) An ability to connect The Importance of Making Effective Choices An understanding of rhetorical effects An ability to create effects The Importance of Reducing Writing Errors A desire to meet readers' needs An awareness of frequently made errors An ability to proofread Beginning with Students' Strengths Developing metacognition From unconsciousness through consciousness to automaticity

We believe that there are four attitudinal changes required of instructors to achieve these goals.

First, instructors in all disciplines need to attend more closely to the writing process. For some students, achieving a Satisfactory (3) level of performance is a great accomplishment. For others, that level of achievement is only the beginning of what is possible. In many subjects, however, instructors take the students' writing skills as a given, and feel little or no responsibility for helping to improve them. Fixated on subject content, these instructors feel that the writing process is outside their purview. Consequently, students writing at the "3" level are progressively marginalized as they advance to their second and third years with their writing difficulties unaddressed. It is generally left to teachers of rhetoric, English literature, and so on to accept the full burden of instruction in the writing process. We believe this is an error, and that all undergraduate instructors bear responsibility for all aspects of student learning, including (perhaps especially) the writing and thinking skills that are basic to mastery in any discipline. Assignment structures, scoring criteria, and marker attention all have to be directed to the writing process (as well as to the subject content) in every course in which written assignments are set.

Second, instructors need to provide students with constructive feedback that makes sense within the students' own frame of reference. Grades alone are insufficient, since these often appear arbitrary, even random, to students. We are all familiar with the student complaint that papers that were dashed off in a single evening may do as well or better than those in which the student invested inordinate time and energy. Students need extensive written feedback, explicitly linked to clear scoring criteria, to be able to make sense of their grades. For students in the "3" category, this feedback must focus on the writing process at least as much as on content weaknesses. Equally important, however, is that these comments be linked to the requirements of the particular writing task as shaped by the discipline, school or paradigm. Instructors need to recognize that these students may well be receiving contradictory advice in another class, and without a discipline-based rationale, have no context in which to interpret this conflicting feedback as other than marker bias.

Instructors also have a bad habit of making only negative comments. Taking student strengths for granted, they tend to focus their comments on those areas where they see the student needs help. But that approach reflects the instructor's perspective, not the student's. All the student sees is a sea of red ink, a litany of complaints and criticisms that undermine confidence and do not promote learning. For students to successfully integrate the feedback they receive, it needs to be balanced with at least as many comments on what they have done right as suggestions for improvement. Given the occasionally contradictory feedback from different disciplines, it is extremely useful for students to have their strengths identified so that they know what to do over again.

Furthermore, feedback is most effective when it begins with student strengths and then moves to the corresponding weaknesses. For example, it is not uncommon for a student to use three examples in building their argument. If the first example is well developed, the second less so, and the third much weaker -- perhaps even off topic, as the student desperately casts around to build their case -- one's feedback should begin by identifying what made the first example so powerful, before turning to demonstrate the lack of those same qualities in the third example. Similarly, a student who has used parallel structures to good effect in one part of their essay, but suffered breakdowns in parallelism elsewhere, will be better able to understand what they should have done when the marker starts by explaining what went right in the first instance. By building on student strengths, by making the student conscious of what they are doing right, one is able to move students from unconsciousness to consciousness and so towards the ultimate goal of automaticity.

Third, instructors need to provide students with greater opportunities to undertake

writing tasks that are meaningful within the context of the students' careers and lives.

Finally, instructors need to structure written assignments and scoring criteria to elicit desirable characteristics in their students' writing. They also need to provide direct instruction on the writing process as it relates to their discipline.

References

Dunn, Tom and Barry Jonas, "Moving Students Beyond Satisfactory Writing", Summer Institute on Student Assessment in the Classroom, Calgary, Alberta, August 16, 1994.

Runté, Robert, "Replacing the Term Paper with a Website: Some Practical Considerations", Society for Teaching and Learning, June, 1998.

Runté, Robert. "On Giving Professors What They Want to Hear", I'm Not Boring You Am I? 1:8 (Winter, 1990) FAPA 212.

Runté, Robert., Barry Jonas and Tom Dunn, "Falling Through the Hoops: Student Construction of the Demands of Academic Writing" in, A.Stubbs and J. Chapman (eds.) Rhetoric, Uncertainty, and the University as Text: How Students Construct the Academic Experience Regina: Canadian Plains Research Center, 2007.

Scraba, Elana. Patterns & Processes: Approaches to Writing by Grade 12 Students Edmonton: Student Evaluation Branch, Alberta Education. (undated)

Taylor, Gerald and Robert Runté. "Sociology, Student Directed Inquiry, and the First Practicum", Curriculum and Teaching, Vol. 6, No 1., 1991

Authors

Barry Jonas was the Exam Manager of the Social Studies 30 Diploma Examination with the Student Evaluation Branch of Alberta Education prior to his retirement.

Robert Runté is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education of the University of Lethbridge, and a former Test Development Specialist with the Student Evaluation Branch of Alberta Learning.

Comments to Runte@uleth.ca

**See, for example, Taylor, Gerald and Robert Runté. "Sociology, Student Directed Inquiry, and the First Practicum", Curriculum and Teaching, Vol. 6, No 1., 1991.