Teachers' experiences with feedback in L1-oral language teaching practices

Abstract

Feedback is an important element in the development of students’ L1-oral language skills. The current study focused on teachers’ perceptions of feedback in L1-oral language teaching in secondary education. The findings are based on 19 interviews in which teachers provided their ideas on how they value feedback, their own classroom experiences with feedback, and their aspirations in this respect. To analyse the interview data, a framework with feed-up, feedback, and feed-forward was used, distinguishing between teacher, peer, and learner feedback. Findings show that the teachers strongly valued and used teacher feed-up, and teacher and peer feedback in the classroom. They used feed-forward to a lesser extent and the integration of peer and learner feed-up in class was hardly mentioned. This study suggests several improvements, such as implementing more practice, feedback rounds, and feedback training to support student feedback skills, investing in a safe learning environment, and giving more attention to feedback effectiveness in teacher training.