The Benefits of Peer Feedback: Encouraging Collaboration in Class

Feedback plays a crucial role in helping us to communicate with others. Every day we nod in agreement, smile, raise our eyebrows, or ask people to repeat themselves if we haven’t understood something. We don’t often correct each other's grammar or pronunciation, but that’s only because we generally talk to those who already know our language.

When we speak to someone who’s learning our language, however, feedback becomes a lot more important. We need to really make sure that we’re being understood, and that the person speaking to us is being correctly understood. Just think about poor Christiano Ronaldo when he gave his first English interview at the age of 18. How much less embarrassing would this have been if the interviewer was more aware that Christiano was struggling to get his words out, and knew how to tailor his follow up question to his level of English?

Therefore, teaching students to give and receive feedback is just as important a skill as responding to that feedback, and since teachers don’t have time to give feedback to each student, they’ve got to learn to feed back to each other.

When students work together and give each other constructive criticism, they not only enhance their own language skills but also develop important social and general communication skills.

There are infinite ways to give feedback, but one key thing to bear in mind is that the classroom environment has to be one where students are comfortable giving and receiving feedback. That means making sure that no student sees a mistake as a failure, but instead as a valuable learning experience.

One effective approach is to incorporate icebreakers for group work at the beginning of each class or activity. These icebreakers can help break down barriers and encourage students to interact with one another in a relaxed and friendly way. Icebreakers can range from simple name games to more interactive exercises that require teamwork, allowing students to get to know each other better and build trust. For example, students can begin a piece of group work by apologising for the mistakes they might make when they speak. Make sure students are specific about what mistakes they might make, based on their own perceived strengths and weaknesses. Have everyone in the group take turns to apologise, and make sure that the others respond in a supportive way, telling them that it’s OK, and they shouldn’t apologise because they’re still learning and that they can try to help them correct their mistakes.

Now that students have identified what they think are their own weaknesses, the others in the group can offer support like corrections, or just ask for clarification if the mistake gets in the way of understanding. What might also happen is that the worry about the mistake was totally misplaced and the student’s English is actually great! If this happens, then the others in the group have just seen a really good example of language use and should give it the praise it deserves!

An activity like this is not just good for effective classroom collaboration. It’s also what millions of language learners do every day when they interact with native speakers. All language learners worry about their proficiency, whether it’s their accent, selection of correct tense, or even overuse of a particular word or phrase. Reinforcing that it’s OK to make mistakes, and just relax, let the language flow, and make sure every conversation ends with a mistake corrected is a great way to build students’ fluency and confidence.

Remember, being open to feedback isn’t just for students. You can also develop your teaching practice through reflection and feedback, as discussed by Erin in this post. We hope you enjoy thinking of new ways to get your students feeding back to each other and please let us know if you have a favourite way of developing students’ confidence and fluency.