Giving Feedback

Although giving and receiving feedbacks play a vital part in interpersonal communication and help people to become more perfect, it is not always the case that feedbacks bring about effectiveness in improving someone's performance. Once time, when I was studying at university, my lecturer complained about my attitude in studying, involving lack of class participation and not well-done in homework preparation. And he asked me to change this if I want to pass the final exam. There was, however, hardly any change in my studying because I feel it was hard to accept these feedbacks although they had reflected the real problem of mine at that time.

Firstly, the lecturer has ignored all my explanation about the problem and considered it as the act of self-defence. At that time, my family got into financial problem and I had to do many part-time jobs simultaneously to afford my daily expenses as well as my tuition fees. Consequently, I could not arrange my schedule reasonably and got distracted in studying. Since lack of listening skill or paying attention, my lecturer has given feedbacks without understanding the context, which is the most important characteristic of feedback (Chapter 7- listening and feedback, Management Communication a Case analysis Approach, O' Roorke IV). As a result, he could not get the full picture of my life and of course could not give constructive feedbacks for my dilemma.

Secondly, feedbacks giver here (the lecturer) did not take into account my efforts in studying. Although I just spent little time and prepared my homework carelessly, I still finished all tasks before involving the class and did quite well when he called me for answering the homework questions. All of his feedbacks only focused on my negative side and ignored my compliments. It made me feel of unfair and frustrated with my circumstance.

In conclusion, the situation given above was the case that feedback giver (the lecturer) was not excellent