Intervention Report: Effective Feedback for Pre-sessional English Students

Working with the Language Centre my main role is as a tutor on the summer Pre-sessional English (PSE) programme. This is now my sixth year, but I have been an English language teacher since 2002, and so working exclusively with ‘foreign’ students for whom English is not their first language is my personal norm. Prior to working with International students within UAL my teaching has been (and continues to be for much of the year) in an ESOL context in Further Education colleges. I’ve seen much variation over the years in the kinds of students that make up these classes, both in the ratio of asylum seekers/refugees against migrant workers, and in respect to language, culture and faith. Needless to say, I wish to see that all students are not disadvantaged by the learning environment being in a non-native tongue.

The focus of this report is that of providing students with feedback. From a language teaching perspective, Ur (1991) defines feedback as information conveyed to students regarding their performance of a task, generally in order for them to improve such performance, and which has two features: firstly assessment, which is nothing more than a grade or comment, and secondly correction, which more specifically guides the student towards better performance (p. 242). An additional, but equally significant purpose for Walsh (2022) is that it further informs teachers in their planning of learning (p. 18-9). The importance and power of feedback should be obvious, yet it is not uncommon for HE students to find it one of the least satisfactory elements of their experience, and therefore make limited use of it (Winstone and Carless 2019, p. 5). McConlogue (2020) reveals that rates of students accessing feedback provided within a VLE can be disappointing, and infers this may be due to students not finding feedback helpful for their next assignment (p. 120). So whilst tutors and students recognise its value, it is inconsistent in achieving its goals.

The readings undertaken have a common thread in asserting that effective feedback takes place within a dialogue, with Walsh (2022) stating that this “can occur in three arenas”, these being between student and teacher, between student peers, and “within an individual student’s own mind” (p. 17), the latter hereafter referred to as self-assessment. McConlogue (2020) believes that the act of formulating feedback on a peer’s work aids students’ comprehension of feedback, leading them to better self-access their own work (p. 118), perhaps due to it being “more cognitively demanding than receiving feedback” (p. 131), whilst Alexander, Argent and Spencer (2018) state that self-assessment should be executed prior to any other feedback being given (p. 216), later adding that feedback is “less threatening if it begins with self-assessment followed by peer feedback, and then teacher feedback” (p. 257). Clearly, all arenas are valued parts of a complete approach.

The Confines of Pre-sessional

The literature digested related to an HE context appears to focus on main programmes in which tutors have a significant sway over the manner in which courses are executed; but PSE has an imposed curriculum and syllabus, including all assessments. Additionally it is comparatively short in length (I’m presently tutor on a 12-week course, but there are also 7-week courses running), and it is ‘high stakes’ in that students not demonstrating the necessary progress will be denied the opportunity to move on to their chosen degree or foundation studies. Such success is measured against set standards, and UKVI are our ultimate adjudicators. Within such time and syllabus restraints I feel it necessary to focus on the student and teacher arena, as the time and attention required to develop students sufficiently to make peer and self-assessment achievable is a luxury we lack, whilst not denying their value. Considering also McConlogue’s cognitive demands mentioned above, the additional cross-linguistic factor renders this unrealistic. A further point that may warrant future exploration is Hyland citing the idea that peer review may be inappropriate for students from collectivist cultures (2006, p. 43).

Every year there are small, or not so small, changes to the PSE programme (sometimes in response to comments from students, but that’s a different kind of feedback!), and one change this year is in how students receive feedback on completion of formative assessments. Previous years we had feedback templates for the writing of an Exhibition Review. These were not onerous, and allowed the tutor to state which marking criteria (or areas of them worth highlighting) had been achieved and which needed more development, and importantly had a few questions for students to respond to and return to their tutor. That way the feedback demanded a student response, ensuring a level of engagement. However, this template has been withdrawn, replaced by a feedback email and, importantly, considerably more one-to-one tutorial time; so the onus is upon the tutor to elicit a response to the feedback more verbally. Of course, while much is prescribed (it is deemed important that there is consistency across PSE classes), the manner in which the tutor conducts tutorials is where there is flexibility and opportunity.

Review of the Literature

The terminology varies, but the three works reviewed share the same message: McConlogue (2020) calls for ‘dialogic feedback’ in which students are not “passive recipients” (p. 119) and where “student and teacher can negotiate understandings of standards” (p. 125); whilst Walsh (2022) wishes to see the ‘transmission-reception” approach replaced with an “engagement model” (citing Sutton, 2009), calling this a constructionist view that sees knowledge as a student created entity (p. 16); and with Winstone and Carless (2019) advocating a social constructionist ‘New Paradigm’ of ‘feedback exchanges’ in which feedback is “reframed from something that teachers do, to a process where students are involved in seeking, processing, and using feedback information” (p. 5).

A further commonality is the place of feedback within the wider learning programme. Winstone and Carless (2019) see feedback not as “something that happens after assessment”, but is “designed into learning processes”, and necessitates a sequence of activities that allows students to apply feedback from one activity to the next (p. 9). They see it as a requirement for students to be able to utilise comments when undertaking a subsequent activity in order to develop, and once students realise this opportunity it is implied that they will become more motivated to engage with the process (p. 6). McConlogue (2020) posits that feedback loses its relevance if students lack the possibility of using it immediately (p. 120, emphasis added), and also suggests a self-referential, ipsative approach where a student’s work is measured against previous submissions rather than an external mechanism (p. 130).

A further aspect to explore is the actual content of the feedback. Winstone and Carless (2019, citing Jönsson, 2013) state that students prefer to receive “specific, detailed and individualised feedback” (p. 43), although add that such a level of detail may slip back into the problems of the ‘old paradigm’ (p. 44). Continuing, they mention the problem of students not always understanding the ‘academic terminology’ adopted in feedback, and even if they did comprehend, wouldn’t necessarily know what action they should take in order to develop (p. 44). McConlogue (2020) echoes this view when arguing that without grasping the criteria they are been assessed against they are “unlikely to be able to make sense of teachers’ feedback or understand how to use it to develop” (p. 120).

A common practice is to use phrases lifted directly from assessment descriptors. With a heavy workload this is convenient for the tutor as it allows speedy cut ‘n’ paste of relevant areas (where a student has done well, as well as requiring development), and it is important to be transparent with learners as to how they are being assessed. However, even native-speaking students need time to become familiar with this language genre, and very importantly such descriptors tend to cover a broad area and not identify specifically what a student needs to do. For example, taking a descriptor from the PSE Exhibition Review Marking Criteria we can read “Cohesion is attempted, but not always successfully maintained”: a student receiving this ‘feedback’ may possibly understand where they have a weakness, but would have no clues as to what action to take.

Recommendations for Practice

Within PSE there is not the opportunity to have a sequence of iterative tasks for which to develop certain skills step-by-step, so it becomes necessary to identify more generic areas for students to work on. This seems to contradict the ‘specific’ want of students expressed above, but with more general language problems, such as signposting phrases and linking devices, this can be achieved. Alexander, Argent and Spencer (2018) believe that students “are more likely to be able to correct global aspects of their writing in a short time than to improve grammatical accuracy”, and so to get them over the line we should direct feedback to more text-level aspects (p. 218).

Realisation of the dialogic new paradigm becomes viable with the increased one-to-one tutorial time; so let us turn our attention to how this could be utilised. The tutorial will take place after the student has received written feedback, so:

• when writing comments, consider what action the student could be expected to enact (Winstone & Carless 2019, p. 58);
• once feedback is received, the student completes a short questionnaire, made up of a small number of generic questions chosen by the tutor from a bank.

Then, during the tutorial:

• phrase comments, where practical, as questions, thus requiring student participation (Winstone & Carless 2019, p. 102, citing Anderson 2014);
• ask students how they utilised previous feedback;
• finally, the student develops a (tutor-guided) action plan, identifying areas to develop and how they will go about doing so.

At the time of writing, I am at week 7 of a 12-week programme, having recently entered the summative phase – the summative assessments themselves are several weeks ahead giving me the potential to begin applying some of these ‘recommendations’ immediately.

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References

Alexander, O., Argent, S. and Spencer, J. (2018) EAP Essentials: A teacher’s guide to principles and practice. Second Edition. Reading: Garnet Publishing.

Hyland, K. (2006) English for academic purposes: an advanced resource book. Abingdon: Routledge.

McConlogue, T. (2020) Assessment and Feedback in Higher Education: A Guide for Teachers, UCL Press: London. Available from: https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781787353640. (Accessed: 1 July 2024).

Ur, P. (1991) A Course in Language Teaching: Practice and theory. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.

Walsh, J. (2022) Questioning for Formative Feedback : Meaningful Dialogue to Improve Learning, Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development, Arlington. Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central. (Accessed: 1 July 2024].

Winstone, N. & Carless, D. (2019) Designing Effective Feedback Processes in Higher Education : A Learning-Focused Approach, Taylor & Francis Group, Oxford. Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central. (Accessed: 1 July 2024).