Rationale: “[T]eachers should follow up on feedback” in order to “[make] sure that students understand the feedback, [to help] them with revisions strategies after receiving feedback, and [to hold] students accountable through the writing process for responding productively to feedback” (Hedgcock and Ferris 2013, pp. 243-252). Self-reflection and critical analysis are “often [an] overlooked source of feedback.” Guided self-assessment helps “students become better readers and editors of their own writing; such work builds confidence as students become more aware of their own strengths and their abilities to help themselves” (p. 262).
Student self-awareness (metacognition) can be raised by requiring them to engage in reflective writing “as part of a pre-writing activity or as a piece accompanying the final draft” in which they are “asked to look at the comments, marked errors, and where they missed points on previous assignments and describe what measures they will take or took to avoid those errors on the current assignment” (McMartin-Miller 2014, p. 33). Such activities can help students to see that their writing practices impact their written products.
Considerations for adaptation: In addition to the questions about the student’s development as a writer (what writing scholars call “learning to write”), faculty could include questions about what the students learned about the course topic/content or the discipline more broadly through the process of writing (what writing scholars call “writing to learn”).
1.Which of your strengths as a writer do you demonstrate in this essay?
2. Which of your challenges as a writer are exhibited in this essay?
3. What resources did you use to help you compose, revise, and edit this essay?
4. How did you use the comments and feedback from your previous essay(s) to assist you in composing, revising, and editing this essay?
5. What strategies and techniques from your previous writing project did you retain when going through the process of composing this assignment? Why? What changes did you make in your writing process? Why?
6. What resources, strategies, and techniques do you plan to use for your next writing project? Why?
7. (Can be added if the student is completing this self-evaluation after receiving instructor feedback on the writing assignment they are being asked to reflect upon and you haven’t included the grade or the filled-in rubric with the feedback). Based on my comments and the grading rubric, what grade do you think you earned on this assignment? Why?