Taking control of feedback
Many lecturers put great effort into providing comments on students' academic work in the belief that this will help them improve their future work. Many students believe this as well, despite the research evidence to the contrary. The reality is that teacher comments are not always the best and not the only form of feedback. You might not understand what the lecturer wrote, you might understand it but not know exactly how it relates to the work you produced, or you might understand it and know how it relates but not understand what to do to actually improve that work, that is, if you get the opportunity to do so (which is not usual).
What does it take to use teacher feedback? First, you must interpret what it means, then you must compare this against the work you produced. This is a difficult task, if the comments are abstract and the suggestions for improvement are not detailed. What if the teacher, instead gave you a few good examples of work like the work you produced and 'asked you to compare' your work with those examples, and what if you actually did this? Research shows that you would learn much more from this than from comments. In the case of the teacher you are comparing your work against some words about your work (albeit about its strengths but more usually its weaknesses) while in the case of examples you are comparing your work against actual works similar to yours. These works would normally be better but research shows that you learn even by comparing against weaker works than yours, as they may be weaker in some aspects but not in others. Also, students often report that seeing weaker works lets them know what mistakes to avoid in their own work in the future.
Have you ever thought about this? That a teacher does not really provide feedback. The teacher only provides some information. It is the student who creates feedback as this occurs when you compare the comments with your work and you identify what needs to improve. If you cannot fully interpret what the teacher wrote (in exactly the way she intended) then this comparison will be 'faulty' and the feedback you generate will be less valuable!
Just trying this out - the third paragraph is quite difficult to get right as it packs a lot of cognitive thinking! DN