Giving feedback to language learners

Affective differences

Equally important are affective differences.

•  One of the most important affective differences 

is the anxiety levels of the learner. Low anxiety 

will almost certainly help learners to benefit from 

corrective feedback on their speaking (Zhang & 

Rahimi, 2014), but may be less significant with 

their writing, as the feedback is usually delayed.

•  Motivation, too, will affect the degree to which 

a learner attends to feedback, and personal 

learning goals will play a part here. A learner who 

needs immediate ‘survival English’, for example, 

may well be less interested in accuracy than 

another who is preparing for an examination.

•  Learners will also bring different sets of beliefs and 

attitudes to feedback. To a certain extent, these 

will be shaped by previous learning experiences, 

and it is not uncommon for students in secondary 

education to be accustomed to having all their errors 

corrected. The somewhat problematic result of this 

practice may be that learners come to associate good 

speaking or writing with good grammar (Hyland, 

2019, p. 270–271). Research (Li & Vuono, 2019) has 

repeatedly shown that most students expect and 

want to be corrected (comprehensively, directly and 

by the teacher) and that they are more interested in 

grades than they are in formative comments (Lam & 

Lee, 2010). Paradoxically, of course, they may not be 

happy with the actual feedback that they receive!

11 The research referred to here can be found in Biber et al. (2011) and Kang & Han (2015). 

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