School Supervisors’ Feedback to Student Teachers

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of 23 post-classroom observation discussions between 15 EFL student teachers and 23 school supervisors in six high schools in Vietnam and individual interviews with these participants. The analysis was aimed to describe linguistic features of the supervisors’ feedback regarding turn taking and speech act patterns and the participants’ perceptions of the tone of the feedback. Findings showed a considerable imbalance in the lengths of the turns taken, with school supervisors doing much more talking and using few compliments directed at student teachers’ teaching. In fact the criticisms predominated and were not always as well-received by the student teachers as the supervisors thought. The student teachers were divided in their feelings about the feedback they received and while many felt somewhat discouraged, they did not reveal this to their supervisors. These findings raised awareness among teacher trainers about the importance of the tone and language features in their feedback and gave some indications of what linguistic areas in supervisors’ discourse should be targeted in attempting to develop supervisors’ ability to give effective and acceptable feedback to student teachers.