Teachers Feedback

Introduction

Feedback on assignments is one of the most troubling times for any student. In fact, this is also a hassle for teachers as well. Both are dependent and yet there are differences in the opinion throughout the world. A general belief is that whatever a student has been taught in class must be evaluated in order to determine that students did learn what was delivered during class. Not only it increases the learning persistence and satisfaction upon completion of task, it contributes to the development of adopting new and productive learning strategies. However, if students do not receive a proper feedback, it can lead to de-motivation and even decrease in performance. Therefore, the teacher-student feedback is arguably one of the most important strategies used for learning and recognition of one's abilities and weaknesses (Brown, Harris and Harnett, 2012).

Discussion

According to Hattie and Timperley, feedback is defined as “Information provided by an agent (e.g., teacher, peer, book, parent, self, experience) regarding aspects of one's performance or understanding” (Hattie and Timperley, 2007, pp81). Usually, teachers are responsible for giving feedback but lately, it has been seen that self-assessment practices makes a student to identify the learning objectives and understand the criteria that are used to mark grades. 3 types of feedback methods have been described which are; written or spoken comments about student's behavior and efforts, grades or marks and comments about learning. The purpose is to improve student learning by providing them information about their shortcomings, reporting compliance on grades and encouragement upon getting positive results (Brown, Harris and Harnett, 2012).

Another factor involved is the gender and cognitive styles. Cognitive style is been defined as “Concerned with consistent differences in how people gather, interpret and use information” (Hayes, Allinson and Armstrong, 2004, pp.404). Analysis and intuition are two styles that have been identified as key techniques to improve learning. Analysis is described as rational, sequential and logical thought process while intuition is impulsive action, creativity and quick thinking. These are the processes that help in evaluating and improving one's learning abilities and in some programs, these 2 capabilities are being judged by creating such papers that promotes these abilities of students. Regarding gender differences, there is little proof that it matters in feedback or assessment. A general belief is that females are more analytic than males while males were more intuitive in approach in both learning and teaching. Studies prove that students and teachers did have very selective choices with respect to tasks and response upon it (Evans, Waring, 2010).

It is a fact that teachers and students agree that feedback from both sides is important for self-assessment. This feeling intensifies when the course in a secondary language where students feel that more response should be give on their grammar and other mechanics and then on their ideas, organization and content. However, several studies have shown that feedback on local issues like grammar etc. do not really help learners to improve upon their errors even further, some studies suggested that correcting local errors ...