Drawing on Readerly Intuition in Sentence Level Feedback

Abstract

In this paper, we discuss our research into the effects on student writing of giving sentence-level feedback at several stages in a scaffolded assignment in a large second year science course. Our results indicate that feedback that draws on the reader’s intuitive sense for writing, rather than on their technical grammatical knowledge, was the most popular choice for TAs assessing student work, and also led to the most revisions on the students’ parts. Accordingly, we argue that focusing on this more intuitive approach might be a fruitful strategy for TA training.

Keywords

• training
• feedback
• tas
• sentence level issues
• science
• scaffolded