Unit 33 · Giving feedback
Feedback is giving information to someone about their learning, and/or showing them that you have understood (or not) what they have said. Teachers give learners feedback on language, skills, ideas, behaviour, attitude or progress — orally or in writing — and learners also give feedback to teachers and to each other (peer feedback).
◆What is giving feedback?
Feedback1. To tell someone how well they are doing. After a test, or at a certain point in the course, teachers might give learners feedback on how well they are doing. 2. Teachers also give feedback after an exercise that learners have just completed; e.g. after lear… click to keep open · see glossary is giving information to someone about their learning and/or showing them that you have understood (or not) what they have said. In the classroom, teachers can give feedback to learners, and learners can give feedback to the teacher.
When teachers give feedback to learners, they give them information about their learning. Teacher feedback can focus on learners’ language or skills, the ideas in their work, their behaviour, their attitude to learning or their progress. Sometimes we give feedback to the whole class, at other times we give feedback to small groups or individual learners. We can give oral feedback or written feedback. The purposes of feedback are to motivate learners, to encourage learner autonomy and to help learners understand what their problems are and how they can improve. When learners give feedback to each other on aspects of their learning this is called peer feedbackFeedback given to a learner by another learner in the class; e.g. learners can give each other feedback on things that are good and things that can be corrected in a piece of written work. See feedback. click to keep open · see glossary. Learners can also give feedback to teachers, for example on different aspects of the course and the lessons, such as materials, methodologyThe methods, procedures and principles a teacher uses in the classroom, e.g. the methodology of a coursebook. click to keep open · see glossary (methods and procedures) and activities used in class.
◆Key concepts — examples of teacher feedback to learners
Think of: four examples of feedback, two oral and two written, you have given to your learners recently. What aspects of speaking or writing did they focus on? Why did you give them this particular feedback? How do you think it helped them to improve?
Here are some examples of teacher feedback to learners.
| Example | Focus | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Oral: ‘Well done. That was very good. It was much better than last time. You really thought about the presentation.’ | Progress, effort, achievement. | Encouraging the learner and telling her she did well (praising). |
| Oral: ‘Have another look at number four. There’s a problem with spelling and I think there are more than two people.’ | Language and content. | Identifying where there was a problem and prompting what the learner needs to do to correct her own answer. |
| Oral: ‘Let’s look at the new structure on the board again. I think some of you have misunderstood how we use it.’ | Language. | Reviewing a problematic language area with the whole class in an encouraging way. |
| Written: ‘What an amazing story! You’ve used adjectives very well this time, but there were a few problems with past tenses. Have a look at the irregular verb list at the back of the textbook.’ | Content, ideas, language, both strengths and weaknesses. | Giving a personal response to the piece of work in order to encourage the learner. Identifying a positive aspect of the work (adjectives) and also giving exact information about one problem area and about where the learner could find useful reference material. |
| Oral: ‘You’ve made good progress in all your work this month. Your written work is much more accurate.’ | Language and progress. | Informing the learner of her progress and identifying an area where particular progress has been made; encouraging. |
| Written: ‘B/70%. Have a look at grammar section 5 at the back of the coursebook and check again the difference in meaning between the past simple and the past perfect.’ | Language. | Giving a grade and informing the learner of what the problem was with their work and telling them exactly what they need to review and how. |
| Oral: ‘You’ve done the pairwork activities quite well this week, but I heard too much Spanish and not enough English.’ | Language, achievement and behaviour. | Encouraging learners, but also informing them about inappropriate behaviour. Monitoring students’ behaviour over several lessons to give feedback on changes, e.g. improvements in behaviour or worsening of behaviour. |
◆Key concepts — eliciting feedback from learners
Teachers can also elicit feedback from their learners. This feedback can give information on whether learners like what they are doing, whether they are interested in the materials or activities, or whether they are having problems with the language. Learners can also make suggestions for materials and activities to use. Teachers often use questionnaires or learner diaries to find out information from their learners.
In learner diaries, students write their feelings or comments on various aspects of teaching and learning as guided by the teacher, e.g. lesson content, activities, methodology, their own learning styles. Diaries can be written in L1 or in the target language. Diaries are collected by the teacher on a regular basis. The teacher reads the comments and writes something in response to the content of what he/she has read: he/she does not correct the language. Learner diaries are not read by other learners or by other teachers. In this way teachers and learners can give and receive feedback within a safe and secure context.
Feedback to learners can be linked to formal or informal assessment and can be given to learners in the classroom or during individual tutorials (small meetings between the teacher and one student or a few students to discuss their learning).
We can also write regular feedback in the form of comments, grades or marks on a learner’s record sheet. The learner can keep this sheet in their portfolio or we might keep it with our records of their overall progress and achievement. We can use this feedback when we make our end-of-course assessment.
◆Key concepts — peer feedback
Learners can also give feedback to their classmates. This is called peer feedbackFeedback given to a learner by another learner in the class; e.g. learners can give each other feedback on things that are good and things that can be corrected in a piece of written work. See feedback. click to keep open · see glossary. Peer feedback can be oral or written, and can cover the same focus areas as teacher feedback. Peer feedback is useful for all learners. The learners who give the feedback reflectTo think carefully about what you or your learners have done, in order to learn from it and improve. click to keep open · see glossary on (think about) the work their classmates have done. The learners who receive feedback are given information on how they can improve. The learners are often guided by a feedback observation sheet. Young learners, though, are not able to give very detailed peer feedback because they are not yet able to think about their classmates’ work very carefully. Peer feedback can have a positive effect on classroom dynamics and can help to train learners in skills they need to become autonomous.
◆Key concepts and the language teaching classroom
Read these tips and tick the ones which are most important for you:
- Wherever possible, feedback should be balanced, focused and helpful. It needs to be balanced so that there is comment on positive aspects of a learner’s work as well as areas he/she needs to improve; focused so that the learner knows exactly what the good points are and what the problems are; helpful so that the learner knows what steps to take to improve. This is particularly important for weaker or less confident learners.
- Feedback can be given at different stages of a lesson, for example at the beginning of the lesson when we comment on work we have marked, during an activity, while we monitor learners doing pairwork or group work, at the end of an activity when we tell learners how they did, or correct their common errors at the end of or after the lesson when we are marking some written work.
- During class or individual feedback it is possible to revisit or recycleTo use language or activities again later in a course so that learners revise and remember them. click to keep open · see glossary language that learners are having problems with, by providing learners with written exercises, or by including the language for review in an oral activity in the following lesson.
- Small-group feedback sessions are useful for the teacher and learners to give and receive feedback on classes and on teaching and learning.
- Feedback which is particularly personal or sensitive should be given to learners privately and not in front of the whole class.
- Written or oral feedback can be given to learners after formal assessment in addition to a mark or grade. This feedback should include guidance on how learners can improve their work.
- Learner diaries provide teachers with an opportunity for individual, private two-way feedback (learner to teacher as well as teacher to learner).
- Learners often need guidance to help them provide teachers with feedback. If we say to learners, for example, ‘Write some feedback for me about the lesson and about your learning styles in your learner diaries. You have ten minutes,’ it is likely that learners will not be able to provide much useful feedback because the task is too general. It is better to give learners guidance or a framework to work with. For example, we can review the activities in the lesson, what they did in each activity and the types of interaction. We can then ask learners to write about which activities they preferred and why. Over a number of lessons we can introduce other elements so that learners become more familiar with reflection and with giving feedback.
- Units 18 and 22 for assessment
✎Follow-up activity
(See page 244 for answers)
Look at this section of a lesson plan. What is the purpose of each of the underlined feedback sections? Feedback might be teacher to students, students to teacher or student to student.
| Timing | Procedure |
|---|---|
| 10–15 minutes | Listening: Tell students the gist question and play the CD. Students compare their answers in pairs. Elicit answers from the class. |
| 10 minutes | Tell students to read the true/false statements silently. Check key words. Play the CD again. Students decide true or false for each statement. Check answers with the class. |
| 5 minutes | Elicit from students the strategies they used to do the true/false activity. Remind them they have the same task in the exam. |
| 5–10 minutes | Have students take out their notebooks. They complete the vocabulary exercise in their notebooks. Monitor students as they do the activity. Remind them to look back in the book and check with their friends. |
| 5 minutes | End the lesson by eliciting feedback from students on what they did in the lesson and what they think they learnt. |
Check your answers — answer key (book pp. 237–244)
Students compare their answers in pairs. The purpose of this student-to-student feedback is to enable the students to compare their work with a partner (cooperation) and, when there are differences, go back to the text or the exercise and check more carefully for the correct answer (linguistic). This type of student-to-student feedback can give learners more confidence in offering answers to the class when the teacher elicits them.
Check answers with the class. The purpose of this feedback from the students to the teacher is for the teacher to make sure that students have understood the listening sufficiently well to complete the task. If she finds that the students have not been able to complete the task, she might a) play the CD again, b) give students information before they listen again to make the task easier, c) provide the answers, e.g. on the board, and move on to the next activity.
Elicit from students the strategies they used to do the true/false activity. The purpose of this feedback is to encourage students to reflect and to become more autonomous. An added purpose is to enable students to become better at certain types of task, for example those which they will meet in examinations.
Monitor students as they do the activity. Remind them to look back in the book and check with their friends. The purpose of monitoring is for the teacher to provide students with feedback on their work, and/or for students to be able to ask questions of the teacher if they have any queries. By reminding students to look in the book and check with their friends, the teacher is promoting learner autonomy and peer support.
End the lesson by eliciting feedback from students on what they did in the lesson and what they think they learnt. The purpose of this feedback is for the teacher to a) find out what the students think they have done and learnt in the lesson (it might not always match with the teacher’s aims), b) find out what she might need to recycle in another lesson (if students have not fully understood), c) promote learner autonomy and reflection amongst the students.
💡Reflect
Think about these comments from teachers. Which do you agree with and why?
- My learners are only interested in the marks they get for their work. They are not interested in my comments. They don’t even read them.
- I want to encourage my slower learners, but I sometimes find it hard to give them useful feedback on their work. They make so many mistakes!
- I don’t think we should ask learners to give feedback to their teachers. The teachers know what to do and how to do it. It’s not the learners’ job to tell teachers what to do.
🔍Discovery activities
- If you teach younger learners, try the feedback chat on page 11 of English for Primary Teachers by Mary Slattery and Jane Willis, Oxford University Press 2001. Note down what happened in your Teacher Portfolio.
- For more ideas on how to give feedback, look at Units Three and Four of A Course in Language Teaching by Penny Ur, Cambridge University Press 1996.
- Try introducing peer feedback sessions in some of your classes. Are they effective? How do the learners feel about this approach? Note down what happens and the learners’ reactions in your Teacher Portfolio.
✎TKT practice tasks
These multiple-choice tasks are exactly as in the book, but interactive: pick your answers, check your score, and retry anytime. The scoring uses the official answer key from the back of the book.
📖Glossary terms in this unit
Key terms highlighted in this unit — study them on the flashcards page.
Editorial note — OCR and reconstruction notes for this unit
Book pages 215–219 (pdf 220–224). The seven-row Example/Focus/Purpose table runs across pp. 215–216 and was rebuilt from wrapped OCR rows (focus/purpose columns were interleaved in the scan). In the Follow-up lesson-plan table (p. 218) the original underlining is not visible in the OCR. Discovery item 1 is uncertain: it reads like ‘the feedback chat on page 11 of English for Primary Teachers’ but the word after ‘feedback’ is badly degraded in the scan. Practice task 33 option 1C is printed as ‘1:1 feedback’.