Could Indirect Feedback be too Difficult? Examining Students’ Perceptions towards Indirect Feedback

by Daron Benjamin Loo   In my provision of feedback, I would typically include a variety of feedback. If I perceive that an error may be difficult for students, I might offer direct feedback. For errors which I think students might be able to correct, I might give indirect feedback by highlighting a word or […]

Does Peer Feedback Benefit Developing Writers?

by Deborah Choo & Jonathan Tang   Although the benefits of student peer reviews have been widely acknowledged by educators and researchers alike, the development of students’ feedback literacy continues to interest colleagues in higher education (e.g., Reddy, Harland, Wass, & Wald, 2020). A number of colleagues at the Centre where we work have also […]

Developing Assessment Literacy in English and Communication Practitioners: Q&A with Associate Professor Li-Shih Huang 

  The teaching of language and communication involves not only impactful lessons, but also carefully constructed assessments. SoTL Matters recently approached Associate Professor Li-Shih Huang from the Department of Linguistics, University of Victoria, to answer some questions regarding assessment from the perspective of a practitioner. Our questions for her were shaped based on her recent paper about […]

Student Impressions of Peer Review: A Brief Study

by Coleen Angove and Anuradha Ramanujan   As a follow-up to our previous blog post on the importance of persuading students of the value of peer reviews and equipping them with the skills to participate effectively, this post offers a brief retrospect of student impressions of the experience. Peer reviews are built into writing classes […]

Perception towards Metalinguistic Feedback and Its Impact on Writing Quality: A Preliminary Examination

by Daron Benjamin Loo   Setting In today’s competitive world, it is common to find students who are more concerned about their grades and not the learning process (expedient learners). Nonetheless, there are also students who are invested in the skills and knowledge they gain from their modules (deep learners) (see Alauddin & Ashman, 2014). […]

Peer reviewing: “It’s not about you; it’s about me.”

by Anuradha Ramanujan & Coleen Angove   A rather indiscreet Facebook message from a while ago sowed the seed of this investigation into effective peer reviewing. A student taking an Ideas and Exposition module (IEM) bemoaned his frustration at a recent peer review experience, expressing dismissiveness at his peer reviewer’s “obtuseness,” and called peer review a […]

Specialized Teacher Feedback: Teachers Have Some Say

by Reza Norouzian and Zohreh R. Eslami Texas A&M University (Texas, United States of America) Keywords: grounded theory, theoretical sampling, specialized feedback, EFL settings   Abstract Results from theory-driven research on error feedback are open to doubt as they come from comparing different techniques of error feedback under varying conditions. Using openended interviews and the […]

Reliability of Second Language Listening Self-Assessments: Implications for Pedagogy

 by Vahid Aryadoust National University of Singapore (Singapore) Keywords:      academic listening, rating scale model, self-assessment   Abstract Language self-appraisal (or self-assessment) is a process by which students evaluate their own language competence. This article describes the relationship between students’ selfappraisals and their performance on a measure of academic listening (AL). Following Aryadoust and Goh […]

Assessing Students’ Language Arts Performance: The Experience of Hong Kong Teachers

by Benjamin Li The Hong Kong Institute of Education (Hong Kong, China)   Abstract This article reports findings from an investigation of the English language arts (LA) assessment strategies used in Hong Kong secondary schools, and the extent to which these strategies reflect the principles of performance-based assessment. The summative and formative assessment tasks, together […]