Giving feedback

Language learning
Key Ingredients to guarantee effective language learning.

• motivation (goal), 
• determination
• exposure, 
• use (pick any bit of E. that comes your way)
• aptitude (some people seem to have a natural propensity and make better learners)
• meaningful communication
• Reading (essential at certain levels to process the language and bring your level further up)

Best example: Russell's method of learning French: lots of listening to podcasts, reading, watching news in F. grammar as it is needed. Result: very competent in speaking despite lower grammar level. It does come a point when grammar is important.

Teachers should have their own principles and truly believe in how a language is learnt. This is known as teacher cognition (Simon Borg)
I'm really pleased because I see eye to eye with Russell that meaningful content is more effective than grammar. Again, Technology is only a tool to reach our objectives. Russell started using technology in 1995 but he  was already doing a lot of group work and pair work.

Screencasting, an effective way o providing feedback

Russell Stannard presents the three most popular technologies from his very popular and user-friendly website www.teachertrainingvideos.com.  

Russell Stannard presenting 10 ways to use screencasting

Russell Stannard with an Introduction to SnagIt.

The fact of recording whatever you do and can see on a computer plus your voice commenting on what's going on.
This is revolutionary teaching idea that has multiple uses: to deliver content (teacher) and also to process it (student)
The main use is that it can be used to give students feedback on their written and aural work. techer can provide the marking scheme/ assessing criteria before actually correcting whatever the students produce.

Advantages:

• Rich content (much more information is coveyed, we speak 4 to 7 times faster than we write)
• Formative
• Personal (one-to-one teaching)
• Focused,(much clearer explanations for the student)
• Good listening practice of natural language
• Dual coding: using visual and audio elements at the same time enhances working memory (Richard Mayer)
• Allows reviewing.

An example of good use of screencasting: as students' reflective exercise. Russell's experiment: He set an assigment for his students to do, he got it backto be corrected, gave each student a mark without letting them know. Then he wrote a checklist of what he expected to read in those essays and recorded it. He sent it back to his students and asked them to score their production. Most of them scored their mark lower than he as a teacher had.

Possible problems:

• Time consuming for the teacher, but does everything need to be corrected?
• Consistency We should agree on format or length, very brief or very detailed?
• Not good for second markers
• Privacy 
• It's not dialogic
• Works betten on longer pieces of work
• Big groups. Send them a recording of the rubric (scoring guide used to evaluate the quality of students' constructed responses).

Conclusion:

It's a very efective way of providing feedback. It adds value to yoour course. It's the next best thing after having a F2F session with the student. 

Learn more about giving feedback

Watch a power point on how technology can contribute to feedback reflection.

An article on feedback methods used at school.

Technologies used to provide feedback: SangIt and Camtasia SnagIt

One of the technologies to screencast.

Possible uses other than providing feedback:

• Delivering grammar
• Pronunciation exercises
• Make up lessons

Ideal for mixed-ability classes. Also to help C1 students at the EOI with their presentations.