Key words What is constructive feedback?
GATEWAY UNIVERSITY
At university, a student writes several drafts before any assignment (a piece of written coursework) is ready to be handed in for assessment or grading.
A lecturer usually helps by giving constructive feedback on an early draft in order to help the student to improve. Constructive feedback has to include comments on what was good about a text as well as what could be improved.
A lecturer gives two main types of feedback on a student’s written text: content and structure. Feedback on content includes comments on the quality of the student’s ideas and the accuracy of the information. Feedback on structure is about how clearly the ideas are organized. In addition, there may be some suggestions about better words to use and some grammar correction, but not as much as an English teacher would give. At university, students also give each other constructive feedback.
Task 8 Thinking critically
Chen has written an e-mail to his former English teacher at his old high school. Because the teacher, John, is very friendly, Chen wrote an informal e-mail to tell him about life as a student at Gateway University. Chen has asked Guy to check the e-mail and give him feedback.
8.1 Read the e-mail below. Write notes on some constructive feedback for Chen. Comment on at least one good thing and at least one thing that could be improved.
8.2 This is an informal e-mail to a friend. Is there anything that would be incorrect in a formal e-mail to a teacher that Chen had not yet met?
drafts assignment a piece of coursework assessment grading to improve content structure the quality of the accuracy of
Key words
reply grateful embarrassing situation advice dissertation
j.d.owen@rhs.edu.cn s.l.chen@
gwu.ac.uk Life at Gateway University
Hi John,
How are you? I hope you have a good class of students this year, like me and my friends. I hope you remember us all! You asked me to keep in touch and tell you how I like UK, so here is my report!
I am OK. The campus is beautiful with lots of trees and a lake with ducks – very tasty! No, we don’t eat them ☺ but we feed them sometimes. I live on the main campus in a big hall of residence. The other students are good. I am language partner for a guy called Guy (Ha Ha! Really that is his name!). He is learning Chinese, like you. But he is not so good as you yet. He also helps me a lot with my English. Everything is convenient. It has a sports field with a running track on the north west, so I can run every day to keep fit. It has computer labs in most buildings for everyone to use. Now I am e-mailing you at Petroleum Engineering, because it is outside the running track where I just ran. No problems yet except shopping and eating. Shopping is expensive. It has a supermarket on campus but the cost is a little bit high. With some friends we bought 5 kilo of rice in the Chinese supermarket at the city centre. We can share to make it cheaper. The canteen – called food court – is not bad prices but I miss my Chinese food. I am trying to cook some things for myself, like rice with tomato and egg, but I am a bad cooker. I start my real computing classes next week. Last week my EAP teacher said ‘I hope you remember everything I told you because this is your very last English class, for ever!’ What a shock, but maybe she is right. There is too much work to do in computing. I have seen all the lectures and labs and assignments for Semester 1 on our web noticeboard. No time for English class. ☹ I hope I will be OK.
John, I miss your jokes. Send me some! From your hard-working ex-student. Chen
36
ACCESS EAP: Foundations • Unit 2
Self study
Find some guidance notes on a university website on how to study effectively at university. Choose about half a page of text and find words from the key word lists in this lesson. Make a note of the words that you think will be useful.
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