The importance of teachers’ feedback
Through taking SLA class, I found feedback the most interesting in that it is practical and usable. I believe that giving feedback on learners’ output must be extremely important as much as providing input(or feedback can be one of input).
Output is the production that implies learner’s interlanguage, which should not be left alone. Once the learners have produced the output, it is the teacher’s role to deal with it. The degree and the ways of giving feedback might widely vary according to many factors such as learners’ age, learning strategies, learning styles, individual preferences, etc. And the feedback itself would vary in terms of its frequency, salience, degree, and methods. If the teacher misses the effective and instant feedback on learners’ output, it will retard or defer learner’s progress in learning their second language.
While working on my final paper on the teacher’s feedback, I realized how much giving feedback is time&effort consuming, and got to wonder learners’ reaction to the feedback as well. “Do learners appreciate teachers’ labour on the feedback, particularly aimed at their own paper? Do they even read the feedback carefully? How differently does each learner take the feedback? Does the feedback just slip away or penetrate into learners’ interlanguage, and further, prevent fossilization? How do they utilize the feedback to improve English? Is it helpful after all?
Learners’ reaction to the feedback
Thinking of the importance of feedback, I realized that the learners might not appreciate the teachers’ feedback and it is more evident in writing. For example, when I was a middle and high school student, all I cared about on my paper was the score. The teacher would have spent substantial time in giving feedback, but it took only a few seconds for me to find the score.
As soon as I got the paper from the teacher, I turned it over quickly so that nobody could see my paper and flipped the corner of paper and checked my score on the back page. Then quickly folded it in half and put it in my bag. Sometimes I looked at it carefully at home, but it was frustrating and overwhelming because my paper was all blooded with the teacher’s correction in red and mostly on grammar.
I believe that it was not only me, but everyone else at that age. For example, I and my friends were curious about each other’s score and I kept asking “What is your score?”. However I never asked “What feedback did you get from your teacher?”
Adults, on the other hand, probably more appreciate the feedback since most of them are fully motivated to learn the second language. Personally I love feedback and I seek for the feedback on purpose. I like asking questions and getting explicit, prompt feedback. I still care about my score but I more focus on what I did good and wrong.
As for myself, the obvious reasons for different attitudes toward the teacher’s feedback are motivation and the definite goal. Also, it is interesting that young learners and adults have different behaviors on feedback. I want to know more about the LEARNERS’ SIDE on feedback for the further study, hopefully! I guess, there is relatively less paper on how learners take the feedback than how teachers give feedback.
Through taking SLA class, I found feedback the most interesting in that it is practical and usable. I believe that giving feedback on learners’ output must be extremely important as much as providing input(or feedback can be one of input).
Output is the production that implies learner’s interlanguage, which should not be left alone. Once the learners have produced the output, it is the teacher’s role to deal with it. The degree and the ways of giving feedback might widely vary according to many factors such as learners’ age, learning strategies, learning styles, individual preferences, etc. And the feedback itself would vary in terms of its frequency, salience, degree, and methods. If the teacher misses the effective and instant feedback on learners’ output, it will retard or defer learner’s progress in learning their second language.
While working on my final paper on the teacher’s feedback, I realized how much giving feedback is time&effort consuming, and got to wonder learners’ reaction to the feedback as well. “Do learners appreciate teachers’ labour on the feedback, particularly aimed at their own paper? Do they even read the feedback carefully? How differently does each learner take the feedback? Does the feedback just slip away or penetrate into learners’ interlanguage, and further, prevent fossilization? How do they utilize the feedback to improve English? Is it helpful after all?
Learners’ reaction to the feedback
Thinking of the importance of feedback, I realized that the learners might not appreciate the teachers’ feedback and it is more evident in writing. For example, when I was a middle and high school student, all I cared about on my paper was the score. The teacher would have spent substantial time in giving feedback, but it took only a few seconds for me to find the score.
As soon as I got the paper from the teacher, I turned it over quickly so that nobody could see my paper and flipped the corner of paper and checked my score on the back page. Then quickly folded it in half and put it in my bag. Sometimes I looked at it carefully at home, but it was frustrating and overwhelming because my paper was all blooded with the teacher’s correction in red and mostly on grammar.
I believe that it was not only me, but everyone else at that age. For example, I and my friends were curious about each other’s score and I kept asking “What is your score?”. However I never asked “What feedback did you get from your teacher?”
Adults, on the other hand, probably more appreciate the feedback since most of them are fully motivated to learn the second language. Personally I love feedback and I seek for the feedback on purpose. I like asking questions and getting explicit, prompt feedback. I still care about my score but I more focus on what I did good and wrong.
As for myself, the obvious reasons for different attitudes toward the teacher’s feedback are motivation and the definite goal. Also, it is interesting that young learners and adults have different behaviors on feedback. I want to know more about the LEARNERS’ SIDE on feedback for the further study, hopefully! I guess, there is relatively less paper on how learners take the feedback than how teachers give feedback.
How to utilize the feedback in learning
To prompt learners to utilize the feedback, teacher should try to give positive feedback MORE (especially for young learners!), and more importantly, should come up with activities or assignments to have learners take advantages of the feedback. As for teaching writing, process-based writing should be more appropriate than production-based approach, for example.
I believe that giving input -> producing output -> providing feedback -> utilizing feedback -> converting into autoINPUT (which was proved to be more effective than the input by others) -> output -> feedback and so on. This circulation might break if one of four factors is missing. All of them are equally important for learners and should not be neglected.
Posting the last blog !
It is bittersweet to write the last blog, but overall, the blog was much more SWEET than bitter during this semester, because it helped me in many ways. I believed that it enabled me to internalize the concepts that I learned in class, by summarizing, applying to other fields and connecting to my learning experience, not to mention that it provided much practice in writing. I learned a lot through this class, and had a loooooooooot of fun at the same time ! :-)
