What Kind of Feedback is Perceived as Encouraging by Finnish General Upper Secondary School Students?

Abstract

Our main aim in this study was to compare encouraging feedback practices in Finnish general upper secondary foreign language classes and examine how students perceive language teachers’ assessment practices. The participants were 160 students of English, 95 students of Swedish, and 27 students of French from six general upper secondary schools. The data comprised one open-ended question and one Likert scale question with nine items. Both qualitative and quantitate methods were used to analyze the data. The results showed that content was the most important feature in feedback that was perceived as encouraging by students. The results further indicated that students considered teacher assessment practices to be primarily summative, but differences were also found between schools. The evidence from this study suggests that students appreciate teacher feedback, but do not perceive it to be an intrinsic part of teacher assessment practices. The importance of formative assessment and feedback should be more heavily emphasized in foreign language teacher education.