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Developing Feedback Literacy in Emirati Undergraduates

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English Language and General Studies Education in the United Arab Emirates

Abstract

Emirati students are often schooled in traditional, teacher-led classrooms. However, when they reach the tertiary sector they are exposed to Western styles of teaching which aim to develop autonomous learners. One of the key effects of this culture clash is that feedback is sometimes neither delivered appropriately nor taken up as feed-forward. The aim of this action research project was to help foster feedback literacy in English as an Additional Language (EAL) students in an English Medium Institution (EMI) so that they would be better equipped to understand feedback as an academic literacy critical to their success going forward. This was achieved by treating the feedback process as a genre embedded within the curriculum, and, using some of the tools developed by Sydney School genre pedagogy, breaking the process down into stages where students were able to identify exactly what each part was trying to tell them with actionable and generalizable advice. A majority of students who engaged with the feedback achieved better results. This positively reinforced the students’ engagement with feedback, and led to greater take up in future assignments, thereby ameliorating their understanding of the feedback process and its value for them.

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Correspondence to Tony Myers .

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Myers, T., Buchanan, J. (2022). Developing Feedback Literacy in Emirati Undergraduates. In: Coombe, C., Hiasat, L., Daleure, G. (eds) English Language and General Studies Education in the United Arab Emirates. English Language Teaching: Theory, Research and Pedagogy. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-8888-1_20

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