Questioning and feedback Essay
Effective learning always allows room for improvement. Hence, academic feedback is an essential part of the whole teaching process. It is critical for the achievement of in-depth understanding. Feedback can either motivate or degrade a student and thus, good pedagogical procedures must be undertaken in order to generate positive effects. One positive effect of employing good pedagogical procedures when giving corrections to the students is that they will feel important.
They will realize that their instructor pays good attention to them and want them to perform well in class. They will understand that their teacher is not merely concerned on finishing a particular lesson, but focuses more on their own understanding of those lessons and pays close attention on their respective concerns such as opinions, clarifications and related experiences. Moreover, they will realize that their efforts are not wasted so they will be more focused and determined. Another good effect is that appropriate and accurate corrections allow the students to reflect on their own academic performances. They will try to look back on what they have done in class and will aim to perform better in order to achieve higher goals.
In this manner, academic feedback works as a motivator to the students. Moreover, corrections that are addressed quickly and in a matter-of-fact fashion create a healthier and friendlier student-teacher relationship. The classroom environment is warm and this allows the students to share their own perspectives.
The students will be more motivated to explore and experience because they understand that mistakes are nothing but natural part of learning and that their teacher is there to guide them along the way. When giving corrections, teachers must understand that its goal is to motivate the students and not degrade, humiliate and embarrass them. Academic and behavioral feedbacks which are inappropriate and insensitive will only generate fear to the students. They will then begin to fear committing mistakes, making their actions trivial to themselves because their goal will only be to do things perfectly without even understanding them. Furthermore, such kind of feedback humiliates and lowers the morale of the students. This will eventually affect not only their academic performances but most especially their social interactions with fellow classmates and other people.
Teachers must know that a school is an environment which greatly influences the character and personality of a student. Therefore, she must be sensitive enough to the feelings of the students while being objective at the same time. In addition, there is a possibility that in the long-run, students will no longer want to accept feedback because of their humiliating experience about it. If that happens, effective learning would not be achieved.
There can be different ways of employing appropriate and accurate feedback to a group. One of which is by recalling the objectives. In a particular lesson, the teacher sets specific and measurable objectives which are expected to be achieved by the end of the lesson.
By recalling the objectives, the teacher emphasizes the goals the students should meet. She enumerates these objectives one by one and allows the students to determine whether or not they have achieved the specific objective. This correction procedure includes the reflection of the students based on what they have done and initiates further involvement if needed. Another way is by providing a correction checklist. After a particular activity is done, the teacher will give the each group a slip of paper which contains specific actions needed to be undertaken by the students. This direct correction procedure will allow student to analyze why they still need the indicated corrections in order to meet specific objectives.
Moreover, they will try their best to respond to whatever is indicated in the checklist so that they will feel good about themselves for being able to successfully complete a given task. Allowing self-evaluation ad correction can be another way of employing academic feedback. In this process, the teacher gives a set of rubrics which will be the basis of each student for the evaluation of their respective groups. Afterwards, the students will take all possible corrective actions. With this procedure, they will be able to evaluate their group’s performance point by point and correct themselves. They will also be able to understand the importance of meeting the learning objectives for effective understanding. Fourth would be allowing group-to-group evaluation.
With a given set of criteria or rubrics, each group would evaluate the other and offer suggestions to achieve improvement. In this activity, not only will the students be able to internalize to corrections given to them by fellow students, they will also be able to experience giving feedbacks. From these, they will realize how important it is to give accurate and appropriate feedback to achieve success for a particular activity. Last would be reteaching. In this method, the teacher will identify the errors and re-teach a particular part of the lesson to correct the said errors. Although this may take time and result to adjustments, Hofmeister and Lubke (1991) believe that “it would be better to delay the new material a day so as to help initial success once it is introduced” because prerequisite skills are already mastered.
As the importance of feedback has already been identified, it is also significant to employ appropriate feedback strategies. First is giving feedback to the whole class. In this strategy, the teacher will talk to the class as a whole after it has accomplished a teacher-generated activity.
She will recall the objectives of that particular activity and then give both of her positive and negative feedbacks to the class. Finally, she will determine the overall performance of the class by giving the class a specific rating or score. According to the IELTS Teaching Resources (n.d.), feedback to the whole class is good if the mistakes are common to several students.
This strategy will also save up time while allowing the students to recognize their respective performances. For whole class feedback, IELTS emphasizes that giving corrections and eliciting them from the students are important. Moreover, corrections written on board and delivered orally should be balanced. Next is giving feedback to small groups. In this particular strategy, the teacher will give her feedbacks, both positive and negative to each group.
For this one to be effective, she needs to take note of everything a particular group has done, and then present it orally to the respective group and give her objective evaluations. Feedback to small groups is good if the instructor wants the students “to work out what the mistake” and to focus on interaction (IELTS Teaching Resources, n.d.). Last is giving feedback to individuals.
This kind of strategy will be employed after the class. The teacher will evaluate a student’s performance and give the appropriate feedback. Depending on the teacher, she may give her feedback to the student alone or may ask his or her parent or guardian to come. This is effective if there is a lot of time available to focus on each student’s concerns and if the instructor wants each of them to correct their mistakes in individual performance and homework (IELTS Teaching Resources, n.d.
).Reference List:Hofmeister A., & Lubke, M. (1999).
Research into Practice: Implementing Effective Teaching Strategies (3rd Ed.). Logan UT: Utah State University.IELTS Teaching Resources (n.d.). Correction and Giving Feedback.
Retrieved April 26, 2009, from http://www.cambridgeesol.org/teach/ielts/speaking/aboutthepaper/correct_give_feedback.htm
