Proceedings of the 7th World Conference on Research in Education
Year: 2024
DOI:
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The Effect of Feedback Styles on Students’ Willingness to Communicate in English
Andrew Warrick
ABSTRACT:
This study looks at the effect of instructor directed feedback and peer directed feedback in a university-level English discussion class on students’ willingness to communicate in English. Willingness to communicate (WTC) in another language can be influenced by various factors, and reflects the extent a person will readily use a second language in a variety of contexts. Both instructor lead feedback and peer-centered feedback can improve students’ WTC in a foreign language, and to determine which approach is best suited to this purpose, an experiment was conducted using groups of first-year English Discussion classes. In each regular class period, there are two longer discussions towards the end of the class, with time for feedback between each discussion. One group of classes was given teacher directed feedback during each of these feedback sessions over the course of a semester, while the other group of classes was asked to do a peer-centered feedback activity each time. To evaluate the effectiveness of these feedback styles in improving students’ WTC in English, pre-test and post-test surveys were administered. This presentation will discuss the findings of this research and reflect on the use of these feedback methods.
keywords: instructor-led feedback, peer feedback, language learning, English discussion, surveys