Feedback in Communication Studies

In communication studies, feedback is the response of an audience to a message or activity.
Feedback can be conveyed both verbally and nonverbally.
"[L]earning how to give effective feedback is as important as any subject matter we teach," says Regie Routman. "Yet giving useful feedback is one of the most elusive elements in teaching and learning"

"Strictly speaking, negative feedback does not imply 'bad,' and positive feedback 'good.' Negative feedback indicates that you should do less of what you are doing or change to something else. Positive feedback encourages you to increase what you are doing. If you are crying, feedback from those around may cause you to dry your eyes and put on a brave face (if feedback is negative) or weep unashamedly (if feedback is positive)."

Useful Feedback on Writing

"The most useful feedback you can give someone (or receive yourself) is neither vague encouragement ('Good start! Keep at it!') nor scorching criticism ('Sloppy method!'), but rather an honest assessment of how the text reads. In other words, 'Rewrite your introduction because I don't like it' is not nearly as helpful as 'You start off saying you want to look at trends in functionalistic interior design, but you seem to spend most of your time talking about the use of color among the Bauhaus designers.' This gives the author not only insight into what is confusing the reader but also several options for fixing it: She can rewrite the introduction either to focus on Bauhaus designers or to better explain the link between functionalistic interior design and Bauhaus designers, or she can restructure the paper to talk about other aspects of functionalistic interior design."

"Public speaking offers a middle ground between low and high levels of feedback. Public speaking does not permit the constant exchange of information between listener and speaker that happens in conversation, but audiences can and do provide ample verbal and non-verbal cues to what they are thinking and feeling. Facial expressions, vocalizations (including laughter or disapproving noises), gestures, applause, and a range of body movements all signal the audience's response to the speaker."

Six steps sequence.

Task: Write a comic introducing a new superhero created by the students.

Step 1: Schema building.
The students are given comics for them to identify key vocabulary about this specific genre. The students familiarize with different kinds of superheros, their abilities and powers.

Step 2: Controlled practice.
They use different grammatical structures using for example HAVE GOT/HAVEN'T GOT and CAN/CAN'T to describe the superheros' abilities an the weapons they have.
 They match the superheroes with their characteristics and create a chart describing them.

Step 3: Authentic listening practice.
In this step the students are exposed to listening comics which extend the language they worked on steps 1 and 2.

Step 4: Focus on linguistic elements.
The students have to imagine battles between different superheroes.  The students may use cue words to write questions and answers involving comparatives and superlatives: "Who is faster? Spider man or hulk? Who is the strongest superhero? They decide what hero wins in each battle.

Step 5: Provide freer practice.
Working in groups they can create a role play performance. They write the scripts of the role play and then they perform it before the class. Some students may stick to the script while others will take the opportunity to innovate. The students may play the role of  robber, victim, superhero and villain.

Step 6: Introduce the pedagogical task
The final step is the introduction of the pedagogical task itself. In groups or individually the students design the first edition of a comic introducing a new superhero created by them. In the comic they describe the superheros' abilities and may even present a conflict that the Hero must deal with.

Task	Macrofunction	Microfunction	Grammar
The students of the class are divided into sellers or clients. The sellers offer different kinds of clothes and accessories and the clients walk around the classroom buying.	Socializing. Exchanging goods and services.	Exchanging information about the products for sale. (Prices and characteristic)	Simple present. Verb to be. Demonstrative pronouns: This/These/that/those. WH question How much. Have got. Yes/no questions.