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"Language awareness, metalinguistic awareness and corrective feedback in the perspective of metacognition and language learning"
Adjudication committee
- Professor Günther Sigott, University of Klagenfurt, Austria
- Professor Hilde Hasselgård, University of Oslo
- Associate Professor Pia Sundqvist, University of Oslo
Chair of defence
Professor Andreas Lund, University of Oslo
Supervisors
- Professor Glenn Ole Hellekjær, University of Oslo
- Professor Eva Thue Vold, University of Oslo
- Professor Knut Steinar Engelsen, Western University of Applied Sciences
Summary
This thesis investigates grammar feedback in English as a foreign language writing teacher education in Norway. The study responds to a need to critically examine grammar feedback that student teachers can use for both their own writing improvement and future feedback situations in the classroom.
Methodologically, the thesis follows a qualitative multimethod design. Data include: a single-case study of a lecturer’s written corrective feedback and subsequent writing conferences with 18 students, as well as 2 interview studies with 12 students and 13 experienced lecturers. Ferris’s (2014) best-practice recommendations and Ellis’s (2009) and Lyster and Ranta’s (1997) taxonomies serve as a common unit of analysis. The findings show interesting examples of how feedback modes and types can be combined. In the single-case study, direct, metalinguistic, and elicitative feedback were more frequent in the conferences, thus complementing written feedback. The students favoured direct, metalinguistic, elicitative, focused and unfocused feedback. The lecturers provided mostly metalinguistic, indirect, local and unfocused feedback and used less oral and/or elicitative feedback. Both lecturers and students had positive views of unfocused, metalinguistic and local feedback. However, their views conflicted in terms of oral/written, direct/indirect and elicitative/non-elicitative feedback. For example, lecturers favoured indirect feedback even though students considered it as frustrating. Lecturers and students must communicate better.
This thesis adds to knowledge about how grammar feedback can become meaningful. From a feedback-as-an-artefact perspective, combining written feedback and subsequent writing conferences may improve overall feedback. From a feedback receiver’s perspective, ecological-agentic (Emirbayer & Mische, 1998) and linguo-didactic (Swain, 2000) perspectives can help explain important learning moments. From a feedback provider’s perspective, lecturers might be well advised to reflect on their feedback practices to ensure dialogical and fine-tuned (Doughty, 1994; Han 2001) feedback. Theories on individual cognitions (Phipps & Borg, 2009) and learning ecologies (Van Lier, 2004) can help describe specific feedback recommendations related to teacher education. These three perspectives epitomise teacher education as an assessment community that can promote assessment literacy.