Feedback practices in English in Norwegian upper secondary schools

Abstract

The trends that we see both in official guidelines and school practices demonstrate a shift towards formative assessment strategies with an emphasis on feed-forward comments to the students. How this is carried out in schools varies, and the material in this study shows signs of changing evaluation practices in English instruction. One of the changes is an increased tendency to use process-oriented approaches to feedback, in which the students work through a draft several times before handing in a final product. Much of what is commented on in the feedback focuses on how ideas are organised and how the text is structured. Though process writing is a familiar concept from first language writing instruction, the specific focus on genre requirements in the feedback process makes this a somewhat different type of process-writing, similar to what we find in the genre-pedagogy tradition developed in Australia. The English teachers in this study who report working in this way combine process-writing with explicit instruction in genre requirements. This study explores current feedback practices, and illustrates how process-oriented feedback practices may be combined with writing instruction in a genre-pedagogy approach to writing to support students’ writing.