David Carless

University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

Abstract

This paper introduces the construct of feedback literacy, charts its development and highlights key research findings from applied linguistics. The concept of feedback literacy originated in higher education research and has been enthusiastically taken up in L2 writing and English for Academic Purposes. Feedback literacy involves working with feedback information to enhance performance or ongoing learning. Undergraduate students need student feedback literacy; their instructors need complementary teacher feedback literacy to scaffold student feedback literacy; and university scholars themselves need academic feedback literacy to publish research, manage peer review and enhance their teaching. Applied linguistics research on feedback literacy has focused on various aspects, such as peer feedback and written corrective feedback, and also started to investigate less heavily researched sub-topics, such as feedback seeking and exemplars. The interplay between automated writing evaluation, generative AI as a feedback source and student feedback literacy is addressed. The article concludes with a discussion of limitations and critiques of feedback literacy research and suggests some further research directions.

Keywords

Feedback literacy, peer feedback, feedback seeking, generative AI