What is the purpose of feedback on reassessment essays? A language tutor’s perspective on students’ approaches to resubmission of failed assignments

Students improving a failed assignment need feedback on necessary improvements, but whether or not those improvements then lead to learning is a highly varied experience. This paper discusses feedback from writing centre tutors to three students who were referred for language support after failing an assignment. Feedback was given in two stages: one was simple correction to enable the assignment to pass, the other was in-depth dialogic feedback which followed “feedback for learning” guidance (Askew & Lodge 2000). The separation of feedback offered a way to explore student engagement with reassessment practices and whether they focused on just doing enough to pass or sought to improve their learning. Results suggest that many reassessment practices overemphasise student effort and minor proofreading issues. When looking at how tutors responded to resubmission efforts, there was a strong suggestion that a long-term learning focus was not reliably rewarded: tutors are just as susceptible as student to over-emphasising the need to ‘get over the line’. If students are to effectively learn from improving failed attempts, feedback must engage with more than just what students need to do to pass. Academic writing support must therefore engage with course tutors to help students to see resubmission as a learning opportunity and type of formative assessment by better aligning feedback and reassessment expectations and practices.