Self-Provided and Peer-Provided Feedback

This article presents some ideas about the nature and role of feedback in instruction in writing. For purposes of introduction, feedback is defined simply as information on performance. Feedback can be responses a classmate to one's writing as well as comments or corrections by a teacher. A more elaborate definition will be developed throughout the article, one that considers the possibility of a concept developed by the author and Daniel R. Wolter.' Here students are given the means of measuring their own performance and thereby providing themselves with information on what they have done in a writing assignment. In discussions with teachers, I am led to believe that most of them see feedback only in terms of information a writer receives a reader. That limited view precludes the possibility of self-provided feedback. Similarly, research studies and discussions in articles and methods texts, typically, are limited to responses the teacher and/or peers. For example, Moffett's discussion in Learning to Write by Writing focuses on the advantages of peer over teacher feedback, though he does briefly note the possibility that a learner can receive information from his own perception of what he has done.2