Holistic perspective on Feedback for adult beginners in an online course of Swedish

Abstract

Although several inquiries highlight the importance of feedback in language teaching and learning, there is a need for knowledge concerning a holistic perspective on feedback in the empirical context of written feedback for L2 adult beginners. The study reported here provides additional evidence about teachers’ actual feedback and student attitudes to feedback. The unit of analysis addresses a new context, namely Swedish as a second language, in an online course for adult beginners. The study included ten male and female university-level students with different cultural backgrounds. The purpose was to analyze several previously scientifically tested feedback categories for writing, which were conceptually replicated in the present study, as well as to additionally explore a new category for feedback on pronunciation in the same context. To establish causality, this study used attribution theory. The findings revealed top rankings for language accuracy and pronunciation in students’ evaluation. The teacher gave the most feedback on language accuracy. These results provide support for the importance of feedback on language accuracy which supports the empirical results of other inquiries. Furthermore, the study’s explorative findings support the need for further investigations on feedback on pronunciation. A proposition for future research is that more holistic type studies be conducted, including different categories and proficiency levels.