Doctoral students must write to contribute to scholarship in their professions as well as meet the requirements of their postgraduate education. Contrary to popular belief that postgraduate students automatically become perfect writers, it takes years of learning and practice to master the art of scholarly writing. To achieve this, students must constantly evaluate their progress by seeking, receiving and responding to constructive feedback from their peers, reviewers or committees in charge of their disciplines. Feedback enhances student learning by exposing them to new ideas in writing, confirming their arguments, makes them aware of their mistakes, creates opportunities to compare their work with those of peers and cements their understanding of expectations from their reviewers or committees. Hence, this paper devotes to provide an in-depth assessment of the importance of feedback in writing.
Why Receive And Respond To Feedback?
Feedback is important for self-assessment. A doctoral student uses feedback from peers, reviewers or committees to assess their progress with regard to expressing their ideas in a scholarly manner, mastery of language and writing styles, and meeting the standards of writing in their disciplines. By receiving and responding to feedback, a student is able to keep track of important strides they have made in a certain period and what they need to do to meet the expectations of scholarly writing. Through feedback, students become more aware of their own mistakes in grammar, organization, and planning of their ideas as well as presentation. Consequently, they are better guided on how to improve their writing skills (Hardavella et al., 2017). In addition to that, receiving and responding to feedback enables students to be on the same page with their reviewers or instructors by enhancing the clarity of expectations. Essentially, feedback provides a set of guidelines that students must adhere to and therefore better learn the style of writing or quality of work expected from them. In a nutshell, feedback enables students to monitor their progress and make improvements.
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Receiving and responding to feedback instills a sense of professionalism among doctoral students. Ultimately, doctoral students not only seek to graduate or develop their careers but also mentor and guide other students to become better professionals. Therefore, by receiving and responding to feedback, they learn how to write constructive critiquing in the scholarly writing process to help their peers or juniors improve their writing. Moreover, the feedback places them in a better position to contribute to knowledge in their areas of specialization by identifying shortcomings in other people’s works and offering valuable recommendations for improvement. It also enables them to deal with negative critique of their work (Young, 2000). Feedback is sometimes frustrating to students. Laboring and coming up with a scholarly article or research paper and falling short of expectations can be disappointing particularly if it is not communicated to the student properly. However, the tensions associated with receiving and responding to feedback eventually become understood as normal processes of the scholarly writing process and helps students build confidence in their work regardless of the comments they receive (Hardavella et al., 2017).
Lastly, feedback widens the scope of knowledge among doctoral students. When they seek feedback, they learn new concepts and ideas that can strengthen their arguments. Students get a deeper understanding of the scholarly writing process and become capable of producing a scholarly product (Hardavella et al., 2017). By putting up their work for review by others, students are exposed to new frontiers of knowledge both in writing and their fields which improves the quality of their work.
What I Have Learnt About the Scholarly Writing Process in My Academic Career
The most important lesson learnt about scholarly writing is that it is a gradual process that takes time and patience to master. Importantly, mastery of the scholarly writing process demands continued seeking, receiving, and responding to both negative and positive criticism. Impeccable skills in writing are developed through constant evaluation and improvement. Students ought to be proactive by actively asking for feedback from their peers or their reviewers even when such feedback is not guaranteed. In essence, this enables them to evaluate their progress, exposes them to new ideas, and provides opportunities to correct their mistakes. Developing confidence in the scholarly writing process centers on receiving and responding to feedback. As a writer, one benchmarks with other writers without feeling uneasy or afraid that the comments may be negative. One also better learns how to manage emotions along the feedback channel (Giles, Gilbert and Mcneill, 2013). Secondly, writing skills are nurtured through continued reading of diverse literature. Reading is also a prerequisite for the proper understanding of the scholarly writing process because it exposes one to various writing styles and articulation of ideas. Continuous reading enables a student to understand the mechanics of writing and the components of a scholarly piece of writing (Hardavella et al., 2017). Moreover, they familiarize themselves with common mistakes that writers make and learn to avoid them. Reading is making a conscious decision to mentor oneself using the works of others. There are instances when students do not automatically receive feedback from other people or when feedback on their work is delayed effectively slowing down their process of learning and self-evaluation. In such cases, focused reading enables the student to pinpoint their weaknesses and make the necessary adjustments. Lastly, the scholarly writing process is not static. Even when a student has mastered the art of scholarly writing, they must keep working on it to maintain or better their work. Knowledge builds on knowledge. Failure to engage oneself in constant writing activities and evaluations will eventually lead to a decline in one’s ability to write. In a nutshell, the key lessons drawn from the scholarly writing process in my academic journey include the importance and need for receiving and responding to feedback, need for extensive reading, and the need for continued practice.
How Feedback and Peer Review Helps Write a Critical Review of Research Literature
Peer review and other forms of feedback help the writer to adjust unclear terms that may have been used to express certain concepts in the critical review hence promoting clarity. Peer reviews offer recommendations on more scholarly ways of presenting ideas and concepts. Moreover, peer review and feedback evaluates the effectiveness of the communication used in writing. Ideally, it is an opportunity for the writer to know whether the ideas communicated in the literature review are understandable (Gannon, 2001). This will be followed by clarification of any other terms that may not be clear. Peer review also enables the writer to learn new and better ideas that can improve their work. Through peer review, good ideas are replaced with better ideas hence improving the depth of argument.
Mistakes are also revealed during peer reviews, thereby enabling the writer to make adjustments before their work is presented for final assessments (Kelly et al., 2014). Through peer reviews, the writer may find out that the writing styles adopted are not ideal or the methodologies used in a particular piece of writing are grounded on wrong hypotheses and therefore get the chance to correct them early enough. In that regard, peer review and feedback improves the accuracy of the research literature. Grammatical mistakes may also be identified and corrected so that the research literature is fine-tuned into a concise scholarly product. Additionally, peer review and feedback allows for furtherance of knowledge in literature. The writer learns new sources of literature which can correct some of the gaps in the research literature. When peers review one’s work, the writer may discover that some of the arguments may have only been presented halfway and therefore give them explicitly and expound on them. Hence, the content of the literature review becomes more solid.
Lastly, peer review and feedback allows the writer to verify the accuracy or factuality of their arguments in the research literature. The writer can only confirm the truthfulness of their ideas through sharing with others and giving them opportunities to respond. Confirming the validity of one’s arguments builds confidence levels and lays the foundation for improvement in future (Kelly et al., 2014). Summarily, peer review and feedback is critical to good critical review in the research literature. Ideally, it allows the writer to avoid blunders, enables them to expound on their ideas, confirm the validity of their arguments, learn new sources of literature and builds confidence for future writing.
Conclusion
Receiving and responding to feedback enhances student learning and development in writing by exposing them to new ideas, bringing their mistakes to light, allowing them to improve through comparing with other people’s works and cementing understanding of feedback as normal in the scholarly writing process. The key lessons drawn from the scholarly writing process in my academic journey include the importance and need for receiving and responding to feedback, need for extensive reading, and the need for continued practice. Finally, peer review and feedback in critical review writing allows the writer to correct mistakes, advance their ideas, ascertain the depth and accuracy of their arguments, and build confidence for future writing.
References
Caffarella, R. S., & Barnett, B. G. (2000). Teaching doctoral students to become scholarly writers: The importance of giving and receiving critiques. Studies in Higher Education , 25 (1), 39–52. doi: 10.1080/030750700116000
Gannon, F. (2001). The essential role of peer review. EMBO Reports , 2 (9), 743. doi:10.1093/embo-reports/kve188
Giles, T. M., Gilbert, S., & Mcneill, L. (2013). Nursing students’ perceptions regarding the amount and type of written feedback required to enhance their learning. Journal of Nursing Education . doi: 10.3928/01484834-20131209-02
Hardavella, G., Aamli-Gaagnat, A., Saad, N., Rousalova, I., & Sreter, K. B. (2017). How to give and receive feedback effectively. Breathe (Sheffield, England) , 13 (4), 327–333. doi:10.1183/20734735.009917
Kelly, J., Sadeghieh, T., & Adeli, K. (2014). Peer review in scientific publications: benefits, critiques, & a survival guide. EJIFCC , 25 (3), 227–243.
Young, P. (2000) 'I Might as Well Give Up': Self-esteem and mature students'
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