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While its importance for promoting learning is well-documented, feedback can only promote learning to the extent that it is acted on by learners. However, there is evidence that students often have difficulty understanding feedback or with knowing how to act on it and/or are not necessarily receptive to the feedback provided. These kinds of problems underscore the importance of including the learner perspective in any consideration of feedback practices. This paper describes an intervention which used the 'reflective feedback conversation' and educational technologies to provide written feedback to students in University level Spanish language classes. The aim of the study was to improve learner uptake of feedback, develop student agency and self-regulation, increase alignment between teacher and student goals and expectations, and encourage learners to take a more active role in feedback processes as well as reduce teacher workload. Participants were 50 students enrolled in their third semester (pre-intermediate) of a university-level Spanish program. Data included student questionnaires, interviews with the teacher and students (n=9) and documentation of feedback and responses to feedback across a 12-week semester. Questionnaire data were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics while interview and documentation data were analysed using thematic content analysis. Despite issues with the technology, the findings demonstrate the potential of this approach for making feedback processes more efficient as well as for improving learning.

This study investigates the relationship between performances on the speaking component of the TOEFL iBTTM with performances on academic oral assessment tasks. For the academic tasks, we recorded and transcribed the performances of five local and five high-achieving international undergraduate students on oral assessment tasks in core first-year subjects in three faculties, a total of thirty students. For the TOEFL speaking tasks, we transcribed the performances of six high scoring students from mixed language backgrounds on the two independent and four integrated speaking tasks of the TOEFL iBTTM. On the basis of an analysis of the rhetorical moves characteristic of the two speaking contexts, we conclude that while the moves characteristic of the TOEFL tasks are largely represented in the academic tasks, there are also some differences across the two contexts. These findings both support and challenge the domain definition inference of the TOEFL iBTTM validity argument.

Higher education professional recognition programs, which lead to the awarding of such accolades as teaching and learning fellowships, offer participants opportunities to reflect carefully on their practice. However, few resources exist to help participants engage in reflection after the award-receiving stage. This reflection is important in helping participants not rest on their laurels and, instead, build on the practices for which they received recognition. Through a process of collaborative reflection, a group of fellowship-recipients, from different disciplines and higher education institutions, addressed this gap as stakeholder-participant-researchers by developing a transdisciplinary approach to undertaking post-award reflective practice. From this collaboration, a novel two-stage tool was developed using an iterative design methodology. The tool presented in this paper as the result of this research can be understood as a means of supporting self-paced, continued post-award reflective practice; the tool's first stage guides users through retrospective reflection, looking back on previous achievements, while the second stage leads users through anticipatory planning, looking towards the future, to achieve fresh goals. The tool thus deepens the reflective practice of recognition program awardees and supports their ongoing professional development. This paper reports on the development of this bespoke tool, which may be enacted in varied settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Speaking tasks involving peer-to-peer candidate interaction are increasingly being incorporated into language proficiency assessments, in both large-scale international testing contexts, and in smaller-scale, for example course-related, ones. This growth in the popularity and use of paired and group orals has stimulated research, particularly into the types of discourse produced and the possible impact of candidate background factors on performance. However, despite the fact that the strongest argument for the validity of peer-to-peer assessment lies in the claim that such tasks allow for the assessment of a broader range of interactional skills than the more traditional interview-format tests do, there is surprisingly little research into the "judgments" that are made of such performances. The fact that raters, and rating criteria, are in a crucial mediating position between output and outcomes, warrants investigation into how raters construe the interaction in these tasks. Such investigations have the potential to inform the development of interaction-based rating scales and ensure that validity claims are moved beyond the content level to the construct level. This paper reports the findings of a verbal protocol study of teacher-raters viewing the paired test discourse of 17 beginner dyads in a university-based Spanish as a foreign language course. The findings indicate that the raters identified three interaction parameters: non-verbal interpersonal communication, interactive listening, and interactional management. The findings have implications for our understanding of the construct of effective interaction in paired candidate speaking tests, and for the development of appropriate rating scales. (Contains 2 figures and 3 footnotes.)