Praise and criticism in written feedback

Hyland, F., & Hyland, K. (2001). Sugaring the pill: Praise and criticism in written feedback. Journal of Second Language Writing, 10(3), 185-212.

Background

The authors observed that research on praise and criticism in written feedback is limited. Most written feedback focusses on politeness, speech, and complimenting behaviour.

Aims

The study analysed ways praise and criticism were used in the teacher written feedback.

Sample

Participants comprised two teachers and six ESL (English as a Second Language) students in a New Zealand university language enhancement course. The three participants from Class A were at a low to mid intermediate level in their English proficiency while the other three participants in Class B were all at a high intermediate to advanced level. All the student participants were from different language backgrounds. Teacher written feedback was given to the six ESL writers over a 14-week period.

Method

Data consisted of classroom observations by one of the researchers and interviews to surface teacher and student perspectives on the ways feedback was used.

Findings

The results showed that 44% of the feedback was related to praise and 31% was critical. The remaining 25% constituted comments proposing explicit suggestions. Praise and criticism were combined into patterns of praise-criticism, criticism-suggestion, and praise-criticism-suggestion. In addition, through the use of hedges, question forms, and personal attribution, the teachers sought to enhance their relationship with the students and mitigate the impact of their criticisms and suggestions. Both teachers considered it important to give more positive feedback as ESL writers were very insecure. This indicated teacher awareness of the writers’ affective and addressee-oriented meanings that their comments conveyed. The teacher from Class A made 109 suggestions, emphasising her role as a facilitator and provider of knowledge, while the teacher from Class B made only five, indicating her preference to respond globally rather than addressing discrete points. It was observed that both teachers focussed their praise mainly on ideas, and were less likely to praise the formal or academic aspects of the texts. Criticisms also tended to emphasise this aspect rather than the formal issues. Praise was less precise than criticism and often more cursory than developmental. However, suggestions were evenly distributed between ideas and academic facets, and tended to be pedagogically more useful.

Implications

The authors highlighted that while the intentions of the teachers to respond positively to student writing were good, it was critical to note that the effect of their mitigation often confused the students. Teachers should critically evaluate their own responses and consider ways of making them clear to students.

Original article retrieved from Google Scholar.