Putting Students at the Helm of Corrective Feedback: Creating a Student-led Consultation Practice in the Writing Classroom

Abstract

Corrective feedback and its efficacy in the L2 writing classroom has long been debated. Arguments that both written and coded forms of feedback are ineffective and that direct feedback is inferior to indirect feedback (Truscott, 1999 & Eslami, 2014) have led to a push for self-assessment, which can give students ownership of their work and direction for improvement (Lee, 2016). However, in an L2 context, students may struggle with self-assessment. Self-correcting written work after receiving feedback can lead to long-term improvement (Ferris, 2000), thus, students should be seeking out specific corrective feedback based on their own self-assessment. The practice presented here bridges the gap between self-assessment and corrective feedback in a process-driven writing class. This practice, when applied to a process-driven writing class, will give students the tools to see room for improvement in their own work and ask targeted questions with the aim of receiving specified feedback. This consultation activity benefits the students’ ability to evaluate their own writing against a rubric and limits the chances of students being overwhelmed with numerous teacher-given corrections. This presentation will demonstrate how to teach specific questions based on the writing process, how to construct rubrics for student self-assessment, and how to grade student-led consultations. It will also demonstrate how to implement this practice within the frame of a semester and/or year-long class. It is hoped that this presentation serves as a guide for educators on switching from teacher-led feedback to student-led consultations as well as offer some insight into the student experience.

Keywords

corrective feedback, self-assessment, writing, student consultation, student autonomy