Feedback practices in English in Norwegian upper secondary schools

Abstract

The trends that we see both in official guidelines and school practices demonstrate a shift towards formative assessment strategies with an emphasis on feed-forward comments to the students. How this is carried out in schools varies, and the material in this study shows signs of changing evaluation practices in English instruction. One of the changes is an increased tendency to use process-oriented approaches to feedback, in which the students work through a draft several times before handing in a final product. Much of what is commented on in the feedback focuses on how ideas are organised and how the text is structured. Though process writing is a familiar concept from first language writing instruction, the specific focus on genre requirements in the feedback process makes this a somewhat different type of process-writing, similar to what we find in the genre-pedagogy tradition developed in Australia. The English teachers in this study who report working in this way combine process-writing with explicit instruction in genre requirements. This study explores current feedback practices, and illustrates how process-oriented feedback practices may be combined with writing instruction in a genre-pedagogy approach to writing to support students’ writing.

Upper secondary school students’ perceptions of and experiences with feedback in English writing instruction

“…Finally, it should be mentioned that although the findings stand in partial contrast to an earlier study (Horverak, 2015), the findings are for the most part reflected in other Norwegian and international studies. Concerning types and forms of feedback, the dominance of written teacher comments to finished and graded texts was not only found in Saliu-Abdulahi, Hellekjaer and Hertzberg (2017) and in Saliu-Abdulahi (2017), but also in many other studies, national and international (Havnes et al, 2012;Jonsson, 2013;Biber et al, 2011;Harris et al, 2014;Horverak, 2016;Lee, 2017).…”

“…Despite this, a number of multidisciplinary studies (Gamlem & Munthe, 2014;Havnes, et al, 2012) indicate that current feedback practices do not necessarily comply with the current FA requirements in Norway. The same is the case for English instruction (L2), the focus of this study, where recent studies, with the partial exception of Horverak's (2015) study, indicate that feedback in English writing instruction is a problematic area (Saliu-Abdulahi, Hellekjaer & Hertzberg, 2017;Saliu-Abdulahi, 2017;Burner, 2016;Horverak, 2016). For example, Saliu-Abdulahi (2017) finds that feedback is mostly given on finished and graded texts, and that students rarely get the opportunity to act on feedback while writing.…”

“…The same was the case for the infrequent use of peer feedback and oral-conferencing, the main forms of feedback that promote active dialogic interaction. This probably reflects teacher skepticism (Saliu-Abdulahi, Hellekjaer & Hertzberg, 2017;Horverak, 2015) and student negativity towards these forms of feedback (Saliu-Abdulahi, 2017). However, as shown in Burner (2015), teachers became more positive towards peer-feedback after training.…”

“…In English writing, the situation is similar. Although there is unanimous agreement about the importance of feedback in writing instruction (Burner, 2015;Horverak, 2015;Saliu-Abdulahi, Hellekjaer & Hertzberg, 2017;Saliu-Abdulahi, 2017), practices and perceptions vary, and the potential of FA principles and feedback strategies are not fully exploited. For example, as in international studies such as Lee (2008;, Lee and Coniam (2011), and in Saliu-Abdulahi (2017), we find that most of the feedback is delivered to a finished text with a grade.…”

“…For example, Saliu-Abdulahi (2017) finds that feedback is mostly given on finished and graded texts, and that students rarely get the opportunity to act on feedback while writing. Moreover, alternative forms of feedback, with the exception of self-assessment, are rarely practiced (Saliu-Abdulahi, 2017;Burner, 2016;Horverak, 2015Horverak, , 2016. Furthermore, these findings stand in contrast to teachers' claims that they attempt to comply with FA regulations, and that they clearly recognize the important role of feedback in the writing process (Burner, 2016;Saliu-Abdulahi, Hellekjaer & Hertzberg, 2017).…”