Marcus Otlowski
Department of International Studies,
Kochi University,
Japan

Learner Reflective Vignettes: Manageable Feedback for Learners and Instructors
Feedback is an essential instrument for instructors to develop and improve their courses. Without it, instructors work in an educational vacuum: they are deprived of the necessary information to make adjustments to their classes, course content, instructional methods, or to maximize the educational experience of their learners. However, for instructors of low-level learners, the most commonly used feedback instruments can require a degree of L2 competence that many low-level learners may not possess; for example, learner diaries and lengthy personal reflections. These instruments may not be the most effective methods for obtaining information about the class, the learners and their interaction with the presented materials.

Low-level learners may not feel comfortable or be able to express themselves adequately when required to write in diaries or write long reflective pieces. Questionnaires, although a very useful and informative method for collecting feedback, can be problematic in regard to the time used to create, administer and analyze them. Administering them on a class-by-class basis would be time-consuming for both the instructor and learners, and use up valuable class time. This presentation reports on the results of a reflective feedback project administered to two English Composition classes of low-level learners. It reports on how this short reflective feedback instrument provided sufficient information to make adjustments to materials and instruction, and how it promoted learners, many of them for the first time, to reflect upon themselves as language learners.

Presenter
Marcus Otlowski is from Tasmania, Australia. He has been teaching EFL in Japan for nearly 20 years. He is currently works in the Department of International Studies at Kochi University where he teaches Oral Communication, Academic Writing and English as a Foreign Language. He is interested in task-based learning, learner autonomy and curriculum and material development. He is an associate editor of the Asian ESP Journal, an editor for the Asian EFL Journal, and the Production Editor for The Linguistics Journal.