FEEDBACK ON STUDENTS WORK

Feedback on Student's Work

Feedback on Student's Work

A major part of job of all teachers is giving feedback on written work of students; therefore it is something teachers must be taken care of, since confidence of students can be undermined by them, conditional on how the feedback is given. What usually happens is pointed out by Harmer (1991, p.146) that: “[…] the tendency is for teachers to be over preoccupied with accuracy. This means that students' work is often covered with red ink and no comment is made about whether the work was interesting or succeeded in its purpose.” Teachers can tell students, to avoid over-correction that for a certain writing piece, they will be evaluated on content or arrangement and presentation or on language form. It must be in the knowledge of students what feedback should be primarily on.

By providing written response to the written works of students, teachers can provide personalised comments to students, and responding to writing of students in this way is possibly the best way for a teacher to approach each student on a one-to-one basis. In a process oriented writing curriculum, it is, actually a crucial process. But even in a product-oriented curriculum, a key role can be played by teacher response in the teaching of writing. Straub (1996: p.246) aptly sums up the importance of teacher response, "It is how we receive and respond to student writing that speaks loudest in our teaching."

There are various reasons that give the explanation of compulsion of teachers to correct errors while responding to student writing. First of all, students expect and want teachers to spot on their mistakes (Cohen and Cavalcanti, 1990; Cohen, 1991; Ferris, 1995; Ravichandran, 1996). Therefore, many teachers feel obligated to even out the errors. Neglecting to do so would imply a credibility loss. Another factor could also be the rationale for this realization of a "moral obligation" on the part of the teachers. According to Kepner (1991), the flawed structures would otherwise turn out to be fossilized in the students would cause teachers to correct mistakes of students. Kepner, similar to the rest of the researchers, too necessitates teacher response that concentrates more on content.

While a fair justification is provided by the above reasons for tendency of teachers to correct errors, the possible impacts of correction of error on their students should be in the knowledge of teachers. For ...