CU Scarborough - Academic Skills: Feedback & Reflection

Feedback

What does that mean?

What can you do?

Superficial analysis/ weak points

Concepts have not been explained in-depth. Analysis of evidence and what it means, and how it relates to the concept is minimal/ not present.

Ask yourself:

Which part of your analysis your marker is referring to?

How could you have demonstrated your understanding better? Could you have assessed or presented more evidence?

Too descriptive lacking criticality

You haven’t critically approached your assignment. The validity of the sources you have used has not been assessed.

When completing academic work, you must assess the validity of the sources you are using and evaluate the evidence. You must draw your own conclusions from what the information is telling you.

Minimal use of sources

There are not enough references in the assignment to support the points been made.

Read widely on the topic you are writing about. It is important that the sources you use are quality scholarly sources such as books and journal articles; this will demonstrate that you have considered the topic from multiple perspectives.

Unclear signposting

Topic sentences are not clear, and paragraphs do not flow logically.

Your argument should be coherent and follow a logical order. Paragraphs should begin with a clear topic sentence that tells the reader what the paragraph is about. These should then conclude by linking the idea back to the topic sentence or linking to the next paragraph.

Too broad, lacks detail

Too much information has been included in the assessment, that doesn’t allow for detailed analysis or representation of the topic.

Be sure to assess that each piece of evidence or point that you make is directly relevant to answering the question and not side tracking.

Informal tone

The assessment is written in an informal and un-scholarly register. Use of the words ‘I’ and ‘we’.

Use clear language in your assignments. Avoid using contractions (use do not instead of don’t).