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Feedback Decoder: Overview

You have received feedback on your writing: now what? Learn to decipher, track, and use feedback to improve your academic work.

Overview of using feedback

You’ve received a poor mark for a written assignment and the feedback is crushing. So, what are you going to do? Lock yourself away? Ignore it? Tempting, perhaps, but not the answer!

Getting feedback is an essential part of university life, and learning how to deal with it is crucial. It’s obviously good to receive positive feedback, but we learn a lot more from constructive criticism. Being proactive and working with any negative feedback, and not against it, can get you moving in the right direction. This is known as ‘feeding forward.’

It’s also important to reflect on positive feedback. You may have received a top grade, but being aware of the mechanics of writing, such as structure and style, is crucial to achieving consistency.

Guide contents

The tabs of this guide will support you in better understanding the feedback you receive and using it to grow as a student. The sections are organised as follows:

  • Making Sense of Feedback - Confused by what a marker's comments mean? Here, we break down some common marking phrases.
  • Tracking Feedback - Here we provide two feedback tracking templates and explain how to use them.
  • Types of Feedback - Learn the difference between formative and summative feedback.
  • Methods of Feedback - Explore different ways that feedback might come to you as a student, such as written/verbal feedback from instructors or peer review commentary.