Alternatives to whole class feedback

Last year, looking for some ideas about giving feedback, I came across an article written by my CELTA tutor, Amanda Gamble. Here is what she has to say about the often neglected idea.

What are the drawbacks of whole class feedback?

• The teacher is in control and decides when to move onto the next question.
  
• The teacher is probably doing most of the talking.
  
• Just because the teacher has heard someone say the answer it doesn’t mean that all the students know what the correct answer is.
  
• This method doesn’t help weaker students – they often get lost during the feedback, especially if they have a lot of incorrect answers.

More importantly, it doesn’t tell the teacher what problems the students had with the activity or if they need further practice. However, the most crucial factor is that students don’t learn anything from this kind of feedback – all they get from it is ‘He drank orange juice’ is correct. They don’t learn WHY it is correct or why, for example, ‘He has drunk orange juice’ is wrong.

There are different types of feedback:

• Giving students an idea of how they’ve done after a speaking activity – looking at both their errors and the good things they have said.
  
• Asking students what they think about an activity they have done or to reflect on recent classes.
  
• Checking the answers to activities the students have done.

Let's concentrate on the third one. So students have completed an exercise and now the teacher wants to check the answers. What alternative ways are available to us? Take a look at the following ideas:

1. Give the students an answer key or put the answer key on the wall or the board.

2. Give each student the answer to one or more questions – they read out for the class to check.

3. One student has the answer key and plays the teacher.

4. Get students to write the answers on the board.

5. Get one student to read out his/her answers – the rest of the class see if they have the same.

6. Coursebooks sometimes encourage students to listen to the answers.

7. Give the students a reading text with all the answers in.

8. Students nominate each other to say the answer.

9. Do it as a competition – students work in teams to check their answers and then get points.

10. Teacher monitors while students are on task and makes a note of common problems to concentrate on in feedback.

Why do these?

1. To encourage learner autonomy – the teacher won’t always be there to provide answers. If you put the key on the wall, it also gets the students out of their seats for a few minutes. You can make it more fun by getting them to run to the walls, find the answers and go back to tell their partners – a bit like a running dictation OR give half the answers to one person and the other half to their partner. They share their information like an information gap activity.

2. Although the teacher provides the answers, the students are in control of the feedback.

3. I saw this done really well in an observation. The student with the answer key has to be able to answer questions asked by the class to make it more effective.

4. This is a good way to deal with early finishers.

5. This works well if students have different answers to questions because they can discuss the answer and come to an agreed conclusion.

6. A good way to introduce intensive listening into your classroom with a real purpose.

7. An alternative way to get the students reading in your class. It practises scanning skills and, like 6, has a real purpose.

8. A student-centred version of whole class feedback. It works better if students choose the questions to answer at random as it keeps them on their toes and encourages them to listen to each other.

9. Makes the feedback more interesting and fun and could help to change the pace of the lesson.

10. This saves time going through answers which the students have got correct and gives more time to work on the answers they got wrong and think about the reasons why.

To read more, please visit http://www.onestopenglish.com/section.asp?catid=59798&docid=155374