Beyond the Midterm Grade: Feedback That Helps Students Improve

Midterms are a natural time for a grade check-in. Students look at the number or letter on their report card, families want to know how things are going, and teachers pause to evaluate student progress. But a midterm grade is only a snapshot, and it doesn’t provide actionable feedback, which is what students need to understand where they are and how they can do next to push themselves farther.

This is especially true in the world language classroom where proficiency growth may not always be reflected in a single test score or percentage. Read on to see how thoughtful feedback can shift the conversation from, “What’s my grade?” to “What did I learn and how can I keep going?”

Move Beyond “Right” and “Wrong”

Language teachers assess many different skills: listening, speaking, reading, writing, vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, and cultural understanding. Simply marking an answer wrong doesn’t always tell students what they need to do differently. For example, instead of simply writing: “Wrong verb tense,” try: “Look at the verb ending and compare it with the subject. What change would make the verb agree?”

The second approach still identifies the problem, but it also gives students a pathway toward improvement.

Give Feedback Students Can Use

Effective feedback should not only tell students where they are, but also what they should I do next, even if they are already nailing it. For example, after a speaking activity, you might say: “Good job!” This is encouraging, but it doesn’t tell a student how they can improve. A more useful comment might be, “Nice work communicating your main ideas clearly and using complete sentences. Next time, work on adding follow-up questions so you can keep the interaction going.”

Now the student has something specific to practice.

Make Feedback Part of the Learning Process

Don’t save feedback for only after an assignment is finished. Some the most useful feedback happens while students are still in the process of learning a new skill. Find ways to build short feedback moments into everyday instruction. During speaking activities, you can listen for one recurring strength and one area to work on to share with the class. For writing, provide students with a checklist to use when looking over their rough drafts. After a quiz, students can also work in pairs to help each other identify one thing they did well and one thing they want to improve on for the next test.

Have Students Use Their Feedback

One of the best ways to make feedback meaningful is to require students to use it. After returning a writing assignment, for example, ask students to:

1. Read the teacher’s comments.
2. Identify one area for improvement.
3. Revise a sentence or paragraph.
4. Explain what they changed and why.

In a speaking class, students might record a second version of a response after receiving feedback. They can then compare the two recordings and reflect on their progress.

If you put a lot of work into giving great feedback, students should put in the work to use it for improvement.

Encourage Self-Reflection

The middle of the year offers students the opportunity to pause and reflect. Students can become a part of the feedback process by answering short reflection questions. Here are a few suggestions:

What can you do in the target language now that was difficult for you at the beginning of the year?

What is still challenging?

What is one language goal you have for the next part of the year?

What can you do to work toward that goal?

These questions shift some of the responsibility for learning back to the student. They also give teachers valuable information that a grade alone cannot provide.