What Does My Feedback Mean?

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You slave over a draft. Months of work. Endless agonising. Finally, it’s ready. You press ‘Save’ one last time and send it off. Your job now is waiting for the feedback. And yes, you know the process is meant to be helpful and that your draft won’t be perfect and that you’re on a learning journey, and all that. 

 But it’s still a punch in the stomach when it comes, no matter how well prepared you thought were. Needs development here. Too descriptive. Not enough critical evaluation. Link studies together. Don’t summarise, synthesise. 

 You sink into your chair and randomly thumb the pages. Needs development? Link the studies? Synthesise? What do these things even mean?! And Not enough critical engagement?! You spent more time doing that than anything else! How could there not be enough?! 

 Your first instinct is to fling the whole thing in the bin and take up flower arranging. A wonderful

occupation, no doubt, but is that really your dream? Your next thought is that there must be some mistake, surely, so you set off for your supervisor’s office, ready to march in there and explain how you were perfectly clear and critical and they just missed it. You stop yourself just in time. Finally, you arrive at this: the feedback is meant to be helpful, but is nevertheless difficult to interpret, and that makes it hard to act on. Ah – now that is a fair comment. 

 That’s why this blog is about what feedback means. As someone who has both written and received large volumes of it over the years, I share with you what these rather cryptic comments are generally about. All of them relate back to the purpose of your literature review, which is to make the case for why your research question needs to be asked. That is what your reader is looking for – a clearly presented argument that marshals findings from previous research as evidence for why your research question needs to be in the world. 

 Needs Development Here

When you see this inked into the margin, it typically marks the point at, or near which, your reader can no longer follow your argument. And if you’re thinking ‘But where exactly is here? Is it this sentence? Or that one? Or these two?’, that’s a reasonable question. Here is a funny little word – it is one of a set that stands in for physical pointing (a deictic term, to be precise) and it makes maximal sense when both the speaker and listener are physically present in the moment and can see the same thing. But writers and readers are not typically in this situation, so things get fuzzy – more ‘here-ish’ than ‘here’. The issue is not so much with a sentence or a particular set of sentences, but with the structure of your argument. 

'Feedback is meant to be helpful, but can be hard to interpret. That makes it hard to follow'.

 Let’s say you start, as many reviews do, with There have been many studies on X, and you cite multiple references to prove your point. Okay, good – this is the first step in your argument. You then say These studies have made many contributions to our knowledge of X thus far. Doing fine, this is step two. But then you go on to say Methodologically, Smith (2024) presents some problems. This is where your reader has stumbled, and somewhere near here is Needs development. ‘But I was being critical!’ you protest. Yes, excellent. But this critical insight, as deep as it may be, does no good at this point in your narrative because it derails your argument. After These studies have made many contributions to our knowledge of X thus far, your reader is expecting evidence of these contributions, and then the third step in your argument, whatever that may be. 

But instead, you have launched into problems presented by Smith (2024). So in a case like this Needs development means Provide evidence for the claim you just made and proceed with the argument. This doesn’t mean your point about Smith is irrelevant. It means you need to think more carefully about where it goes in your argument. 

 

Needs development can also mean that your argument is clear, but not sufficiently complex. For example, let’s say you're doing a study on adult outdoor swimming clubs. You start with something like There have been many studies on adult swimming clubs. Good. If your reader is prone to using check marks, one might occur here. ✓ You then say, However, most of these have been conducted on competitive indoor clubs. Fine. ✓ You go on: Therefore, we need a study on outdoor leisure swimming groups. Hmm. Your reader’s pen hovers. Do we need this study? The fact that it doesn’t seem to exist yet is not in itself evidence that it needs to be done. What is it about all the studies on competitive indoor clubs that makes a study of outdoor leisure swimming necessary? This simple 3-step argument hasn’t established that. Your reader’s pen starts moving again: Needs Development. 

Too Descriptive, Not Enough Critical Evaluation 

This comment can feel particularly galling, especially since you took care to critique every study you read. So how can your review still be too descriptive? This is one of the most commonly misunderstood aspects of literature reviewing. Being critical does not mean criticising every study you read and then writing up these critiques one after the other. That does not produce an argument but something more akin to a series of encyclopaedia entries, which is what triggers the ‘descriptive’ comment. The critiques may be present, but they are not, in a structure like this, serving as evidence of anything. You might well critique every study as you read it. This is good practice. But if you then put those critiques in your chapter and simply edit that, you’ve skipped the most important bit, synthesising. And that brings us to what the next comment means. 

Link Studies Together. Don’t Summarise, Synthesise 

 Of all the typical feedback comments, this one may be the hardest to understand. Link the studies? Like in a chain? Well, clearly it doesn’t mean that, but if you look around for a definition of what it does mean, it’s hard to find one. And if you ask people, you tend to get equally unhelpful answers (You know, just link them. Like, together). Linking studies means finding common themes in their findings. Let’s return to our hypothetical swimming study. Let’s say you read 30 studies on adult swimming clubs and 10 of them have findings about bullying. Identifying that common theme and naming it, incidences of bullying, links those 10 studies together. As you proceed through your reading, you’ll find other common themes. How do these themes add up to why your research needs to be asked? That is what is means to synthesise – putting previous findings together in new ways to reveal why your research question must be asked. 

Your Blog Author 

Dr Susan Mandala is founding director of Writing Works Consulting. She holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge and was for many years an academic at the University of Sunderland, where her favourite role was training PhD candidates to write literature reviews. A specialist in the study of language, writing, and style, Susan has 30 years’ experience as a teacher, trainer, and workshop facilitator and is dedicated to helping everyone she works with turn great ideas into results with impact through clearer writing, sharper thinking, and more strategic use of language. 

 She develops and delivers writing workshops in a range of areas, specialising in academic writing, grammar for writing, and analytical report writing. Her signature workshop, How to Really Write Your Literature Review, runs three times a year in October, January, and June (registration and payment through Eventbrite). 

The next workshop is coming soon, on June 9th, so watch this space for when registrations next open! Want to know more? 

I’d love to hear from you! 😊

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

 ‘Susan delivered an excellent, well-structured and engaging masterclass, clear, practical and thoughtfully designed. It stimulated valuable discussion and gave colleagues tangible tools, shared language, and confidence in developing high-quality research writing.’ 

 – Professor Claire Bruce-Martin, Head of School, Sport, Exercise & Rehabilitation, Northumbria University, UK

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