ELTeaching Tip: don’t just rubber-stamp students’ answers

ELTeaching Tip: don’t just rubber-stamp students’ answers

Feedback to tasks and exercises can become very mechanical – a process of merely eliciting and confirming the answers, then moving on. But if you do this, you’re missing a real opportunity not just to go deeper into the material itself, but to challenge students to produce language in the moment.

The Demand-High idea from Adrian Underhill and Jim Scrivener was based on a series of techniques to enhance feedback. Among their suggestions were reformulation – “Can you say this another way?” – and paying attention to pronunciation: “Now say that again, but think about word stress.”

In feedback to reading and listening texts, you can encourage students to express their opinions beyond just asking if they agree with the answer given: “Is this true in your experience?” “Do you agree with the author?” Apart from a speaking opportunity, the other benefit is to maintain students’ engagement with (often rather dry) texts until the end of the lesson.

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