perspectives, feedback practices, student and teacher perceptions swedish title: Skriftlig lärarrespons för vuxna nybörjare i svenska som andraspråk: Teoretiska perspektiv, responspraktik och uppfattningar language: Swedish and English (English summary) author: Liivi Jakobson Abstract This compilation thesis serves to fill a research gap in teacher written feedback on second language (L2) writing and pronunciation by focusing on adult beginners of culturally diverse backgrounds. Basically, this thesis seeks to answer three questions: 1. What do teachers focus on and in what manner is feedback given?, 2. What are the teachers' beliefs about feedback?, and, 3. What are the students' preferences concerning feedback? The study presented in the first article concerns international students and elaborates on a model for analyzing teacher feedback practices regarding writing and pronunciation and the students' ranking of that feedback. Based on the need for a holistic perspective recognized in the first study, the second article presents and discusses the research gap regarding feedback in adult beginner-learner L2 contexts and proposes a hermeneutic approach in the field of L2 research. In article three and four, a new feedback analysis model based on hermeneutics was applied for the design of a questionnaire, which includes the Likert scale and ranking. These studies investigated teachers' (article three) and students' (article four) perceptions and priorities regarding feedback. Data from the students' questionnaires indicated that the students evaluated feedback on grammatical structures in writing as top priority. They generally valued all feedback manners, but clearly preferred specific praise and specific criticism. Results from the teachers' questionnaires, combined with interviews, showed that they evaluated almost all categories as important but the ranking showed that there was a variation between teachers' perceptions, which was influenced by a lack of time, and communication with the students, together with technical problems in web-based contexts. The analysis indicates several factors contributing to the complexity of feedback and, thus, providing feedback requires intuition and dexterity on the part of teachers. It is suggested that aligning students' expectations and teachers' practices and beliefs is especially important in distance-learning contexts in order to facilitate new understanding for clarifying the meaning of feedback.
This study investigates how L2 beginner level students perceive written feedback from teachers on samples of their writing. It centers on beginner learners (of which very little research exists) and covers two broad areas of feedback: Focus and Manner. Focus refers to the kind of areas the teachers concentrate on in their comments, e.g. content, while Manner refers to different ways of delivering feedback, e.g. suggestions. The data was collected from a web-based course in Swedish for immigrants in an online Learning Management System. A questionnaire was used where the students evaluated feedback categories on a Likert scale and thereafter, ranked the same categories. Ranking, where different feedback categories are related to each other, has not been found in previous studies on feedback in the field of second language research. The results show that the students take feedback seriously. A large majority of students chose feedback on grammar as their first priority. They generally valued all feedback manners, but clearly preferred specific praise and specific criticism. I then discuss the conclusions and pedagogical implications based on web-based learning contexts. In particular, I emphasize the importance of establishing a dialogue between students and teachers which enables an orientation towards new understanding.
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