If you give your students a written or oral assignment, you will also need to provide feedback and assess their language use. This Education Tip tells you how to do that.

How to Give Language Feedback?

Start with determining which competencies the student should acquire with the assignment. Align your language feedback to those intended competencies:

• content-related feedback: respond, for example, to the students’ handling the correct concepts, or the proper use of structural words that support an argument;
• form-related: style, structure, spelling and grammar.

 

There are three ways to give language feedback:

1. positive acknowledgement, for example:

• “great that you are using that term;”
• “this is a well-structured paragraph”;

2. explanatory (or paraphrasing) feedback, for example:

• do you mean to say that ...?
• so you are actually saying...?

 3. corrective feedback. You can correct implicitly, for example, by referring students to a rubric, or explicitly, which means you correct the entire text.

 In the context of language development didactics, explanatory feedback and implicit, corrective feedback are a must. This usually enables students to make the transfer to other, subsequent written assignments. However, this does not mean that the other forms of feedback are bad or should not be used.

To Whom to Give Feedback?

Give individual feedback wherever possible. In large student groups, it is best to provide collective anonymized feedback based on the submitted student papers. Discuss what elements are correct and what elements could be improved. Use feedback forms or checklists for this purpose.

 By way of example, Ghent University’s Language Policy Office has developed a Style Guide that can be adapted to your study programme/course unit/specific written assignment. This video demonstrates how to use the Style Guide.

How to Assess Language Skills?

Ideally, use the Style Guide to assess language skills. That way, the expectations with regards to language are also clear for the students. An example of a well-written text can also serve to clarify the assessment criteria.

The assessment criteria should always be in accordance with the course competencies/learning outcomes on your course sheet. If not, there is no ground for you to consider language skills in your assessment. Make sure to specify on your course sheet which language aspects you will assess. Discuss assessment of language skills on the level of the study programme in order to come to a coherent, programme-wide approach of language assessment.

Consider the impact of generative AI tools on evaluation. Upload your writing assignment into such a tool and see what it generates. Especially in the field of language skills, there are several tools that compromise a valid evaluation. Make agreements on what can and cannot be done, preferably within your study programme, and communicate this in a concrete and clear way to your students.

Want to Know More?

 

These (faculty) initiatives may inspire you to boost your students’ academic language acquisition. For more information, please contact taalbeleid@ugent.be.