Subject tutor feedback on student writing: communicating qualities of ‘writtenness’. By Dr Lena Grannell

In this talk, Lena will draw on empirical data to explore subject tutors’ approach to feedback on student writing. She will start from the premise that writing is highly valued across academic disciplines, as evidenced by its inclusion in assignment-specific criteria and the frequency of subject tutor comments on student writing. She will challenge the notion that a deficit discourse frames subject tutor feedback and highlight the qualities that subject tutors appear to value in student writing, in particular, clarity. She will argue that expectations relating to concepts such as clarity are rarely given explicitly by subject tutors and add her voice to other scholars within the field who call into question the assumption that students understand the expectations relating to such concepts. She will discuss how writing developers can use their expertise to investigate subject tutors’ own understanding of these concepts and how we can help them communicate these expectations.