Learners’ perceptions of corrective feedback during written telecollaboration

Abstract

This study examined learners’ perceptions of telecollaboration, specifically an email exchange between learners in the US and Germany, and of peer and teacher corrective feedback (CF) during the exchange. Participants were 38 learners from a second-semester German course at a US university. Their virtual exchange partners were learners of English at a German high school. Learners were assigned to a telecollaboration + peer feedback (PeerF) condition ( N = 15), a telecollaboration + teacher feedback (TeacherF) condition ( N = 10), or a telecollaboration-only (Control) condition ( N = 13). Each week, they sent one email in German and one email in English to their partners. While the PeerF Group received CF on their emails from their partners, the TeacherF Group received feedback from their instructor, and the Control Group did not receive feedback. Quantitative and qualitative data from a survey and semi-structured interviews indicated that all learners strongly believed in both the effectiveness of telecollaboration and CF during telecollaboration. However, learners in the TeacherF Group found telecollaboration significantly less enjoyable than learners in the PeerF Group. Moreover, learners in both feedback groups favored receiving CF from an email partner over CF from a teacher. Pedagogical implications of these findings are discussed.