TKT Core Module 3: Teachers' and learners' language in the classroom
Giving feedback
 Feedback = Information |
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Key concepts in this guideBy the end of this guide, you should be able to understand and use these key concepts:
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Look out for these words like this
in the text.
There will be tests at the end of the guide for you to check that
you understand the ideas.
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Identifying task types |
As we saw in Module 1 (guide to Practice activities and tasks), there are two basic sorts of task:
- product tasks
- In these, what the learners produce is very important. Learners need to know that the product of the task is
acceptable and teachers need to know whether it is safe to move
on to the next phase of a lesson.
Feedback, therefore, both from the learners and from the teacher has to be quite thorough. - process activities
- In these, it is doing the task which is important, not its outcome. Because the doing is more important than the production, what the learners actually produce is probably not important. It has to be valued in some way to maintain motivation and commitment but it needn't be judged on a right / wrong / not bad basis.
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Task 1:
Here's a set of tasks you might do with students working together.
Can you divide them into the two sorts? Product or process? Make a list of the numbers on a piece of paper, if you like. |
| 1 | You start a lesson on 'going to' by asking people to work in threes to come up with three things they would like to do this evening / this week etc. They make the plans and will later express them using the target structure. | 4 | You give the class three pictures that go with a text and ask them in pairs to speculate about what the text concerns and what vocabulary it might contain. |
| 2 | You have a text which contains five facts expressed in numbers. To practise scanning, you get the class to work individually to locate the numbers and make a brief note of what they refer to. | 5 | You have a reading text with some multiple-choice questions to go with it. You get the class to work in pairs to find the answers. |
| 3 | To introduce a listening text, you put up a picture of two people sitting in a café ordering from a waiter and ask the class individually to make a note of where they are and what they are doing. | 6 | For controlled practice in a lesson, you have handed out a gapped text to get the students to complete in pairs. The gaps concern the target language of the lesson, of course. |
Click here for the answer when you have had some thoughts.
Activities in which the outcome or product of the task is important:
1: you want to make sure that the ideas are
sensible or the lesson will fall apart later
2: you want to know if the class has successfully scanned the
material
5: if you use a reading text like this, it's important for you to
know how well the class has done
6: if this is the target language test, you need to know if the
learners can use it to fill the gaps accurately
The other two activities are tasks in which the process is more important than the product. You mustn't suggest this but it actually doesn't matter what they think; this was just a way to get them to think.
3: the purpose of the task is to set a
context for listening and if the picture is well chosen, it's
obvious
4: this task just gets people thinking about the text and its
content so if the pictures are well chosen, the answer will be
obvious
Now look through the 6 tasks and ask yourself two simple questions:
- If the product is important, how can I check it?
- If the process is what's important, how will I get some feedback quickly and move on?
Click here when you have some ideas to see if the suggestions which follow match your thoughts.
- Activity 1: three things they would like to do this evening
- This is an activity you can monitor carefully and then give some feedback by focusing on interesting ideas that arose. While you are monitoring, you can check that the ideas are OK. You do not need to make everyone share their ideas with the whole class. People will get bored and you need to move on.
- Activity 2: five facts expressed in numbers: locate the numbers and make a note of what they refer to
- It is clearly important that you and the class know how well
they have managed to scan a text. This probably calls for
whole-class feedback but you can speed it up by having answers
prepared so you aren't writing everything on the board.
Because this is a key reading skill, you also have to elicit how the learners approached the task
The right answer is by moving their eyes quickly through the text looking for numbers and then reading the section carefully to find out what the numbers mean – understanding the whole text or reading every line is not necessary. - Activity 3: the picture: where are they and what are they doing?
- All you need is for one student to give you the correct answer. Move on!
- Activity 4: three pictures that go with a text: speculate about what the text concerns and what vocabulary it contains
- This is another activity you can monitor carefully and then give some feedback by focusing on interesting ideas that arose. You do not need to get everyone's ideas but you can board some of the vocabulary they suggest. The purpose is to get them to check their ideas against reality when they read the text so what the ideas are doesn't matter.
- Activity 5: a reading text with some multiple-choice questions
- Don't jump into whole-class feedback. It's quite boring to listen to other people's answers. Combine the pairs into groups of 4, or swap the pairs around, and get them to compare answers while you monitor, listening hard. That way, you can focus on the items that are causing problems. If, say, everyone got number 4 right, why bother with it? Make sure, however, that you have a way of giving the class a list of the right answers.
- Activity 6: a gapped text to get the students to complete in pairs
- As for Activity 5, allow the class to check with peers before you get stuck in a dull round-the-class feedback routine. Your focus must be on the problematic items so they check together while you monitor for issues. Again, make sure they have access to the right answers at the end.
Summary
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Giving feedback: what information do learners want? |
Feedback is information.
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Task 2:
Think for a moment about what information learners need from
teachers when they have finished a task. Click here when you have thought a little. |
- How did I do?
- This is the key question and you must be clear. It is,
of course assessment.
Whatever the task, you need to praise and identify good expressions and good language. Even if the product is not important, learners want to know whether they performed successfully.
Praise is an important motivating factor (learning a language is tough) but be careful not to overpraise. If you always say something is excellent, even when it is really not very good, what will you say when it really is excellent?
In a test of some kind, most learners want a score and simply writing Good! on a piece of homework or a test response is not enough.
In a product task, you need some way of telling the learners what the right answer was. You can do this by:
Telling them
Projecting the right answers
Giving out a handout of the right answers
Giving the right answers to half the class and getting the other half to elicit them
and so on. - How can I improve?
- Most learners are in your class to get better at using
English. They need to know where to go next so you must be
ready with advice, for example:
You need more pronunciation practice.
We need to look at the uses of these tenses again.
Here are some ways of getting more listening practice ...
and so on. - What are the key issues?
- In most tasks, if they are at the right level, almost
everyone will have got almost all the answers right. You
need, therefore, to focus on the difficult problems and let the
easy answers go by without wasting time.
To do this well, you need to monitor carefully during the task so you know what the problems are! Then you can get to the point and say something like:
Right. The problems are with the numbers 8 and 12.
The difficulty seems to be with the words in the second paragraph.
and so on.
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Getting feedback from your learners |
From time to time, you need to get some organised feedback from your learners about the course they are following. This can be simple or elaborate and can involve:
- Giving the learners a questionnaire. See the guide in Module 1 to Learners' needs for how to construct a good matrix questionnaire (new tab).
- Getting informal feedback just by asking, for example:
Did you find this lesson useful?
Are you enjoying your course?
Was the text interesting to you?
Do you think this is a good coursebook?
and so on.
Answers to questions like these can be very revealing. - Observing:
If you want to know if a piece of material or a book is engaging your learners, watching them when they are working in class is a good way to get some data.
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Self-test questions |
Before you go on, make sure you can answer these questions. If you can't, go back to the sections which give you trouble.
- Explain the difference between a product-oriented and a process-oriented task.
- Why praise learners?
If you are happy with your progress, go on.
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Tests and practice for TKT |
There's only one practice test.
| Test 1 | A quiz task |
That is the end of the Module 3 course. Thank you for doing
the course.
If you have now followed all the guides to Module 3 of the TKT, you
can:
Revise Module
3 by doing all the tests in the course.
Try a full practice examination for Module 3.
Return to the Module 3 index:
Return to the TKT course index