In written feedback appointments, Writing Center Tutors carefully read a digital copy of a draft a writer uploads and then provide feedback on that draft. Your goal as the tutor is to provide thoughtful commentary about how the writer’s text connects with you, an authentic reader, and suggest next steps the writer might take to revise their draft.
You provide “formative feedback”—feedback that is non-evaluative, supportive, specific, credible, and genuine (Schwartz & White, 2000). Your feedback gives the writer a sense of what aspects of their work you find clear and rhetorically effective and what aspects of their work you find confusing, problematic, or might otherwise benefit from revision.
You “dramatize the presence of the reader” (Sommers, 1982, p. 148) to provide the writer with a detailed, explicit articulation of what you, as a reader, experience when you read the writer’s writing. Your goal in each written feedback appointment is to provide the writer with your sense of what they might consider keeping as-is and what they might revise to build on and improve their work.
You provide written feedback in two primary ways:
Never use the Track Changes feature in Microsoft Word or Google Docs. Track Changes appropriates the writer’s text and is often messy and hard to read.
So that the written feedback you offer to a writer is focused and actionable, in every written feedback appointment at the Writing Center