As a Writing Mentor, I had the opportunity to help students contemplate the effectiveness of their writing through a dialogical feedback practice. Specifically, I used open-ended questions to help students arrive at their own conclusions about how to refine their writing — which helped inform their progress for the ENG 102: First-Year Composition course projects. Additionally, I often encouraged students and referenced assignment goals and criteria to motivate students while ensuring that their writing processes relied on intentionality.

The “collaborative attitude” promoted by Alyssa-Rae Hug in “Two’s Company, Three’s A Conversation” relates to my approach to facilitating dialogue to aid writing students. For example, Hug advocates for a feedback approach that “returns some authority to the writer” — which aligns with my belief that student authors should maintain their autonomy throughout their learning journey (Hug). I made attempts to help students identify their intentions, their audience, and their approach to ensure that students recognized that compelling writing is guided by purpose and intent. I reminded the students I assisted of the importance of the speaker-audience-message relationship and prompted them to consider how to improve their writing through messaging that targets their intended audience. Thus, I supported the writing development of first-year writing students by pointing out areas for improvement through suggestive feedback. Rather than telling students what to change in their approach to writing, I encouraged students to consider how their writing could be developed. Overall, I guided students toward clear, purposeful writing through dialogical feedback and, therefore, helped students refine their literacy practices and writing processes.

I used feedback to engage students in a dialogue about their feedback through suggestive feedback. My feedback comments often emphasized the assignment goals and challenged students to consider how their writing may be improved.