Feedback requests in ELT and beyond

Abstract

Feedback processes carry significant potential to enhance student learning but are complex to implement effectively. One of the dangers in feedback processes is that learners are often positioned passively as merely receivers of feedback information. Unwanted consequences include lack of student agency, failure to engage with teacher inputs and wasted teacher effort. Feedback requests, also known as feedback seeking behaviors, are a useful means of activating the student role in feedback processes. Feedback seeking behaviors are defined as learners intentionally eliciting information about their own work for the purposes of improvement. Eliciting feedback information on self-identified priority areas forms part of the characteristics and repertoire of feedback literate students. Feedback literacy denotes teacher and student capacities to make the most of feedback opportunities. ​Some examples of feedback requests are discussed from ELT, EAP, higher education and the workplace. Some of the benefits and challenges of feedback requests are aired, including the need for teachers to model and encourage feedback seeking strategies. Supportive course cultures and trusting relationships create a climate to encourage feedback requests in which admitting doubts through eliciting information from others is a normalized aspect of lifelong learning.​ Wider implications include the prospects of feedback requests closing gaps in teacher and student perceptions of feedback processes; and thereby carrying potential for the mutual development of teacher and student feedback literacy. It is also suggested that applied linguistics research can benefit from more sustained synergies with its parent discipline of education. The applied linguistics notion of written corrective feedback is critiqued as representing a rather limited perspective on feedback processes. Further directions for transdisciplinary feedback research and practice are proposed.