As an English Literature and Spanish student, I have definitely had my fair share of frustrations when it comes to assessment feedback, both for exams and for essays. Feedback such as ‘well actually, this word would have been better than this word for this very specific sentence’ does not exactly offer much improvement beyond the realms of that one essay.
If feedback can’t be applied to help guide future assignments, then I do find myself wondering how I’m meant to learn from it. And, even worse, for some of my Spanish exams, we aren’t actually provided with any feedback at all, despite having to sit the same exams, at different levels, every year. So yes frustration is an emotion I often associate with assessment feedback - or the lack of it - but frustration doesn’t help me get any better.
"If feedback can't be applied to help guide future assignments, then I do find myself wondering how I'm meant to learn from it."
Although some feedback can be undeniably awfully unhelpful, verging on the edge of pointlessness, it is all we have to help us 'improve' our work in some ways. So how can we make the most of what we get?
Pester your lecturers! Their office hours are there for a reason. If there is one thing that I wish I had learnt earlier in my degree, it would be this: to make the most of your lecturers. If the feedback appears arbitrary, inapplicable and ultimately fails to teach you how to improve, then challenge the markers - ask for an explanation.
"If there is one thing that I wish I had learnt earlier in my degree, it would be this: to make the most of your lecturers"
Our lecturers have to mark an unending stream of assignments every year, their written feedback is often limited by time and word count, so if some of their comments are found lacking or you don’t quite understand the point they are making, all you need to do is ask. Whilst that can be daunting, they are there to help us, and, if anything, they would be grateful for the chance to expand on their points face to face. Don’t get discouraged by the comments of ‘???’ on your work - chase up your lecturers.
After all, assessment feedback is whatever you decide to make of it.