Abstract

Feedback is a term used so frequently that it is commonly taken that there is a shared view about what it means. However, in recent years, the notion of feedback as simply the provision of information to students about their work has been substantially challenged and learning-centred views have been articulated. This paper employs a corpus linguistics approach to analyse the use of the term ‘feedback’ in research articles published in key higher education journals on the topic over two five-year periods: 2009–2013 and 2015–2019. Analysis focused on the most common noun modifiers of ‘feedback’ and nouns modified by ‘feedback’, verbs with ‘feedback’ as the object, possessors of ‘feedback’, and prepositions representing an action or concept on or with ‘feedback’. Whilst the analysis demonstrated that transmission-focused conceptions dominate publications on feedback, linguistic signifiers of a shift over time in representation of feedback away from a transmission-focus towards a learning-focus were evident within each grammatical relation category. The data indicate that the term ‘feedback’ is used by different authors to refer to very different representations of the concept, and the paper proposes that greater clarity in the representation of feedback is needed.

摘要

反馈是一个使用频率很高的术语，以至于人们普遍认为它的含义有一个共同的观点。然而，近年来，将反馈作为简单地向学生提供有关其工作的信息的概念受到了极大的挑战，并且以学习为中心的观点得到了明确表达。本文采用语料库语言学方法来分析在两个五年期间（2009-2013 年和 2015-2019 年）在主要高等教育期刊上发表的有关该主题的研究文章中使用“反馈”一词。分析的重点是最常见的“feedback”名词修饰语和由“feedback”修饰的名词、以“feedback”为宾语的动词、“feedback”的拥有者以及表示“feedback”上或带有“feedback”的动作或概念的介词。虽然分析表明，以传播为中心的概念主导了关于反馈的出版物，但在每个语法关系类别中，随着时间的推移，反馈表示从以传播为中心转向以学习为中心的转变的语言符号很明显。数据表明，不同作者使用“反馈”一词来指代非常不同的概念表示，并且该论文提出需要更清晰地表示反馈。