Monday, September 12, 2011

Workshop Peer Review: Helping Writers Improve through Directed Feedback

Today we're going to look at how we provide feedback to help our peers improve their writing.  Receiving feedback can help you better understand how your audience perceives what you've written - giving feedback will help you attune your senses as to what's important in written work.

Workshop Peer Review - Four Rules of Progressive Feedback

Assumption of the Writing Workshop: Our Writing Undergoes Continual Change
No one writes in a vacuum.  We grow and change over the whole course of our lives - in a way, you are a different person each day.  Likewise, your writing will adapt with the times.  The goal of the writing workshop is to help you see the direction your writing is going while providing specific ideas on how to improve.

How Providing Feedback Helps Everyone Improve
It's a very sad fact: there aren't enough writing teachers out there.  And sometimes you need to be careful: many professional writers and editors will charge a great deal of money to provide personal feedback on your work - feedback which might not help your writing.

This is part of why peer review is such an important component of improving as a writer.  Although professional feedback is helpful, it's more important to receive frequent and helpful feedback from a community of writers.  A diverse collection of opinions from multiple readers can often prove more helpful than close, specific feedback from a single writer.
I started 12Writing in 2008 because I was frustrated by some of the writing courses I was taking.  I spent a few hundred dollars on online and in-person workshops which didn't meet my expectations - I felt that I could do a better job myself.

I was only partly right.  What I've found is that the best courses cultivate feedback from multiple perspectives.  The most helpful workshops are those which fully involve all the writers in the course, whether they are teachers or students.  (I hope you'll come to see that most of us are a combination of both.)

In addition, providing feedback to your fellow writers will help you better understand what we look for in good writing.  By identifying the strengths and weakness in the work of others, you'll come to understand those aspects of your own work, too.

Adjust Your Feedback to Meet the Writer's Needs
Every writer takes a different approach to providing feedback.  For our class, we'll be following a few specific rules regarding how to give feedback which is both helpful and constructive.  You can find them in the post Rules of Progressive Feedback.

For more information on the various types of writing feedback, please see my article on Positive, Negative, and Progressive Feedback.  In particular, you'll want to take a look at the section on how Progressive Feedback can promote the future focus of your writing.

Workshop Peer Review - Four Rules of Progressive Feedback

5 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Here is really very beneficent help for the paper writing services providers and any other writer by direct feedback and they can learn here how to eat well and write more well.

    ReplyDelete
  3. This different breitling replica was re-sold by Sotheby’s already added in Geneva 2011, affairs at $444,000 – the third a lot of big-ticket replica watches uk anytime awash at auction.Both of these models about were destroyed out of the baptize about by an abundantly attenuate swiss replica watches fabricated in 1942.

    ReplyDelete
  4. La caja trasera tiene la replicas relojes etiqueta verde del holograma de Rolex con el número de serie. En general, los detalles de este reloj son muy sólidos, bien clonados y bien colocados. Mi amigo es realmente feliz con el reloj y no ha informado de un problema con el día. Es por eso que decidí que sería un buen momento para esta revisión. Si usted está en Daytona réplica relojes esto es realmente bueno replicas rolex para conseguir. Hasta ahora ha mantenido una buena forma y las miradas están realmente allí. Hazme saber lo que piensas de él.

    Este, en particular, es simple, limpio y bien clonado en comparación con el original. Todas las miradas de acero inoxidable son siempre replicas breitling un gran desgaste. El dial se ve bien, y tiene todas las marcas, marcadores, manos y grabados como en el original. Por supuesto que el reloj genuino tendrá un resplandor mejor, pero no subestime las miradas en este tampoco. Tener todos los elementos en su lugar, un acero inoxidable de buena calidad y un movimiento japonés todos en el mismo reloj y por un precio razonable replicas omega es muy bueno en estos días. Aunque hecha de acero de buena calidad un original Cosmograph Daytona le costará más de 10k, y no sé acerca de usted, pero para mí, que todavía es un montón de dinero.

    ReplyDelete
  5. A paper altering administration gives proficient altering and editing administrations to enhance your thesis. Regardless of the possibility that you have finished your unfinished copy exposition, an expert paper altering administration can have a significant effect in the last nature of your thesis. On the off chance that your last thesis is brief, very much reported, clear, and sorted out, it will be acknowledged by the exposition board. Dissertation Editing Services

    ReplyDelete