The Repository @ St. Cloud State

Open Access Knowledge and Scholarship

Date of Award

5-2020

Culminating Project Type

Thesis

Degree Name

English: Rhetoric and Writing: M.A.

Department

English

College

College of Liberal Arts

First Advisor

Sharon Cogdill

Second Advisor

Matthew Barton

Third Advisor

Michael Dando

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Keywords and Subject Headings

dialogic feedback, first-year composition, feedback models, dialogic feedback models, academic writing

Abstract

Feedback is vital to first-year composition (FYC) students’ learning because students use feedback to gain an understanding of the progress they have made as academic writers and the steps they might take to further said progress. Academia has a long history of conversations on best feedback practices and continues to identify strengths and weaknesses of various feedback models. Dialogic feedback, a method of feedback in which the student actively participates in discussion with their instructor, emerges from these conversations as a feedback model that is potentially better for student learning. The dialogic feedback model merits further study, particularly in relation to how FYC students engage with and react to the dialogic feedback process. Exploring dialogic feedback from the perspective of FYC students is an important area of study, as the students’ actions during the process and feelings about the process offer insight into the effectiveness of the feedback model. Studying how FYC students engage with and react to a dialogic feedback model reveals that FYC students are capable of undertaking an active role in the feedback process, as they can successfully recognize and discuss important concerns in their own writings, if they are sufficiently prepared to engage in these conversations. The students’ active role also allows them to exercise self-regulation and agency, which develops both valuable skills. Furthermore, dialogic feedback makes students feel good about themselves and their writing, which is important, as a relationship exists between how students’ feel about the feedback given to them and whether they feel they belong at their educational institution. These FYC students value feedback models that evoke positive feelings and that offer them sufficient and timely feedback. This evidence suggests that dialogic feedback is an effective feedback model for FYC students.

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