Unit 3: Feedback

Activity 1: Chapter 14 Feedback, Penny Ur.

In this chapter, Ur (1996) asks us to examine and reflect on what we think and how we provide feedback to our students. She provides ideas and examples for providing oral correction and written feedback.

So what is feedback and why is it important? It’s letting the students know how they are doing and involves both assessment and correction. It’s important because the goals of providing are to promote learning and to improve performance. Although feedback is primarily provided by the teacher, it can also be provided by other students. How feedback is provided varies in different theories of language learning ranging from avoidance to acceptance of mistakes.
Ur writes about both formative and summative assessment and the gathering of information. As we saw in Unit 2 of this course, if we use tests for assessment, the issues of validity and reliability must be carefully addressed. And we must look also at criteria and assignment of grades.

In correcting oral work, the distinction is made between fluency work and accuracy work. During fluency work, the usual advice is not to correct although as Ur suggests “supportive intervention” should be given. The teacher is only one source of correction. The student himself as well as the other students can also provide correction. Ur poses the question as to whose ideas about the ways of correcting in the classroom are best. While the teacher has knowledge from experience, the students have “reliable intuitive knowledge about what kind of correction helps most” (Ur, 1996, p. 248). The suggestion that correction should be tactful, encouraging and given with sensitivity seems like good advice.

In my experience with conversation class, I always asked the students how they wanted to be corrected during oral work. It’s interesting to note that some students wanted to be corrected right away; others wanted to be corrected at the end; and finally the others didn’t want to be corrected as long as their message was understood. So it appears that the technique for correcting is not ‘one size fits all’ but an individual preference.

With respect to written feedback, Ur provides us with nine points to consider. These points range from what colour of pen to use when correcting to putting ourselves in the students’ place to imagine how you would feel reading the corrections.

Activity 2: Plan for Feedback

In my assessment plan, I wrote that I would have a data collection form for each student where I would record my observations with respect to linguistic and non-linguistic factors of 4 or 5 students in any given class session. Then this would be used to provide feedback to the students. So the fast answer to when should I provide feedback would be continuously. But let’s get specific. Following through the unit (11) in the book, there are many opportunities for the teacher to provide feedback. I think that whenever we are assessing the students, we can also provide feedback either in verbal or written form.

With respect to the grammar point in this unit which is different ways of hypothesizing about the present and past, when we do the book’s grammar exercises in class, we often check the answers verbally or by writing them on the board. In reviewing these answers, I (and the students) can provide verbal feedback regarding both what’s right and what’s wrong. Before I provide feedback on work that students have written on the board, I always give the students the chance to provide feedback by making changes before I do.

There is also an exercise called Talking about you where the students have to make personal wishes and share them with the class. The idea is for the students to use the grammar point to write sentences about themselves. This provides me with an opportunity to give verbal feedback both as to content and the correctness of the grammar structures used.

The reading in this unit is called Have you ever wondered? After the reading, there are some comprehension questions which can be used to assess the students’ understanding of the text. This gives me the opportunity to call on the students whose data I am collecting in that class session to check their understanding using my Reading Assessment instrument. Also after the reading, there is a section called What do you think? to promote discussion about the reading. This discussion, which could be done in small groups or as a whole class, would provide an opportunity for me to assess oral skills. In these group/class discussions, I try not to interrupt the discussion except when someone is stuck or when they are faltering and need some help to keep the discussion going. I agree with the idea that if we continually interrupt to correct, the students may lose their enthusiasm or concentration. And if we are indeed promoting the communicative approach, what we want to focus on is that message is understandable not that it is 100%. I like to make notes about errors (and good and/or interesting things) that I hear and after the discussion, provide feedback to the whole class. During these discussions, I could also collect data for the Oral Assessment Scoring Guidelines instrument.

Other opportunities for discussion and providing feedback occur both before and after the listening exercise. Before the listening there are some guiding questions for a discussion about dream interpretation and after the listening there is a What do you think? to promote discussion about the listening. As in the above reading example, these discussions provide an opportunity to assess oral skills. In addition to the discussions, there are some true/false and comprehension questions. As with the reading, I cold use this as an opportunity to call on the students whose data I am collecting in that class session to check their understanding using my Listening Assessment instrument.

In each unit of our book, there is a writing exercise. In this unit, the focus is on narrative writing using linking words and expressions. The students are required to write a narrative in the context of something that they looked forward to for a long time. The requirement of writing a first draft and then a final version both provide opportunities for feedback. On the first draft of their narrative, I like the suggestions from Ur (1996). She suggests for feedback, we show that there is an error but don’t offer the correction as they will be writing a final version and will be looking to make it as correct as possible. She suggests that with the first draft of this kind of written work, we also provide the students with feedback in the form of constructive ideas to be used in their final version. I would use the Writing Assessment Scoring Guideline instrument to provide suggestions for the first draft and to give comments and provide a grade for the final version.

After a class where I have collected data about a student, I think I should provide feedback to the student about my observations both in writing and verbally in a face to face meeting. As this could easily become time consuming and tedious, these would be short informal meetings. I think a more formal meeting would be appropriate to provide feedback on all the skills after the formal written and oral tests which occur after every two units.

This assessment and feedback plan might be a little too ambitious although with my small class of 11 students, I think it might be possible. I look forward to trying it in the future.

(The instruments that I refer to were provided in Unit 1.)

My Reflections on Unit 3: Feedback

Feedback is very important yet I think that it is often overlooked or treated casually. I think I have been very lax in providing feedback to my students. Often I have provided just a grade in numerical form or a single word like ‘good.’ After this unit, I can see that I need to provide more meaningful feedback about what is good, what needs to be improved, and the contents. And not just feedback from me but also from the other students.

In real life when we try to communicate verbally, we usually receive immediate feedback. We can see by our listener’s body language and their facial expressions as well as their verbal response whether or not they have understood. And with that feedback, we take the necessary steps to make repairs. But without feedback, we don’t really know and often just assume that our communicative intent was successful.

In the classroom, without feedback either positive or negative, students are left in a ‘no man’s land’, not sure whether they have been successful or not. For the more confident students, this might not be a big problem as they would assume they were understood without any indication to the contrary. However, most students need the feedback, both positive and negative.