Dialogues During Distance: Feedback Practices in the New Normal English Language Classrooms

This study sought to determine the feedback practices and responses of the learners and their parents to marginalia and digital annotations provided by the English teachers in the Self-Learning Kits (SLKs) used for a blended modality. The participants were eight English teachers and 156 learners with their parents. This is a one-shot descriptive study. The participants were given hybrid questionnaires to identify dialogues during distance learning regarding the learners’ preferred types, interaction with, and perceived effectiveness of written or digital feedback. Parents answered a survey about their observation on how learners interact with these feedback mechanisms. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to determine the preferred feedback and if there is a significant relationship among the results set at a 0.05 level of significance. A questionnaire was also used to gather information on the teacher’s feedback practices. The results revealed a significant relationship in the mean scores on the learners’ preferred types of and interaction with the marginalia or digital annotations which indicates a positive effect on the development of their English language skills. The same significant relationship is observed by the parents. With the use of the interview protocols, teachers identified common types of marginalia and digital annotations that engage or limit learners in a blended learning modality. Having this, an informed and contextualized delivery model will engage learners through feedback to have better gains in learning the salient concepts through the SLKs and their ability to participate meaningfully despite certain limitations of blended delivery mode English classes.