Corrective feedback (CF) has been demonstrated in the literature to have a positive effect on language learners' grammatical accuracy in second-language (L2) writing. However, while much work has been done on feedback type (e.g. direct and indirect CF), studies continue to produce results which seem to contradict each other, indicating that a different focus might be useful. Moreover, much of the work on CF has been conducted with English majors or with participants studying (or preparing to study) in universities in English-speaking settings, but the generalisability of these studies to settings where English is neither the dominant language nor the learners' principal academic focus is unclear. The current study shifts the focus from type of CF to ways of facilitating CF use, exploring the issue with Korean L1 learners of English who are natural science majors at a university in South Korea taking a required English L2 writing course. The current study contributes to the body of knowledge on CF provision by quantitatively and qualitatively investigating how participants' use of feedback in this context is facilitated by their Western teachers, and how the effects of facilitated feedback use compares to effects in a group whose use of feedback is not facilitated. Working within a cognitive framework of language learning and using a quasi-experimental, mixed-methods, pre-test/post-test/delayed post-test study design, the study explores the differential effects of two ways of facilitating use of CF on the development of grammatical accuracy in written work, which was academic in style. Effects of these two methods of facilitating the use of CF are compared to effects of an unfacilitated condition. The hypothesis that learners would apply explicit knowledge to analyse and address errors in their writing, resulting in increased accuracy in the use of standard forms, is a cognitive one; and the facilitating of the interventions applies concepts from sociocultural theory. Participants in one facilitated condition received CF orally in individual conferences, with the teacher giving contingent assistance and only providing direct CF if needed; participants in the other facilitated condition received direct written CF, and were provided with worksheets designed to structure their independent reflection upon their writing. Finally, the Comparison Group received direct written CF without any facilitation. Measures of the development of accuracy focused on specific grammatical features targeted for instructional and feedback purposes, and assessed improvement in the accuracy in use of those features in new writing. The study applied a process-writing protocol: Write - Receive CF - Revise - Write a new paragraph. Effects of self-efficacy and language aptitude on the effectiveness of the treatments are also considered. Quantitative analyses of the data suggest that providing direct written CF without facilitating its use enabled the development of accuracy equally as well as CF whose use was facilitated, whether by the conferences or the reflective worksheets. Qualitative analyses reveal how teachers facilitated the use of CF in conferences, and how students participated in both forms of facilitation. Findings suggest that previous educational experience may influence learners' ability to effectively use facilitated CF. Finally, interviews with participating teachers and students provide insight into both parties' experiences with these interventions, contributing to knowledge about intervention development and implementation, both in research and in classroom settings.

O presente estudo foi desenvolvido com o objetivo de investigar, através de uma perspectiva sociocultural, o que norteia a escolha de diferentes tipos de feedback corretivo por professores de língua estrangeira (LE) ao corrigir a fala de seus alunos. A pesquisa foi realizada em um curso particular de idiomas no sul do Brasil que segue os princípios da abordagem comunicativa, tendo cinco professores como participantes. Este trabalho foi realizado através da observação do comportamento corretivo dos professores atuando com seus próprios alunos durante atividades com foco na forma. Tais atividades foram gravadas em vídeo e, logo após a gravação, foram comentadas pelos professores durante entrevistas com a pesquisadora, as quais também foram gravadas em vídeo. Houve uma terceira gravação que consistiu em uma entrevista entre a pesquisadora e cada professor participante para conversarem sobre as percepções dos professores a respeito de tratamento corretivo e diferentes tipos de feedback. A análise das transcrições das gravações resultou em um levantamento e uma descrição das escolhas corretivas de cada professor individualmente e uma descrição do padrão de comportamento quanto à opção por feedback reformulador e/ou feedback elicitativo. Verifiquei que os cinco professores estudados - mesmo tendo experiências, tempo de prática e formação diferentes - consideram principalmente os seguintes fatores quando decidem optar por tipos de feedback: como julgam que o aluno está se sentindo no momento, como vêem a personalidade do aluno e como julgam ser a capacidade lingüística e a capacidade emocional do aluno.

Doctor of Philosophy / Psychological Sciences / Patrick A. Knight / This study was designed to examine the combined influence of feedback sign (i.e., positive or negative), feedback specificity, and goal orientation on individuals’ receptivity to performance feedback. Performance feedback is an often-prescribed solution to performance problems for both individuals and organizations, but evidence regarding its effectiveness as a mechanism for promoting positive outcomes has been mixed. It has been argued that one reason for the inconsistency in previous research findings may be a failure to adequately account for reactions to feedback (e.g., receptivity). Accordingly, this study focused on a series of variables with the potential to influence receptivity, in pursuit of a more comprehensive understanding of the feedback process. It was expected that individuals with certain achievement goal orientations would be more or less receptive to different characteristics of the feedback itself, and that the nature of the task being performed would further influence their willingness to accept feedback and implement task-relevant behavioral changes. Data were collected from 536 participants via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk marketplace. Participants completed the experiment in an online environment. Each participant was asked to complete a pair of error-detection tasks, focused on either mathematical computations or grammatical accuracy. Conditionally-assigned, fabricated feedback was provided after task performance on the initial trial. Surveys were used to assess goal orientation and feedback receptivity. Results indicated that greater feedback specificity was associated with greater receptivity to feedback. Analysis also revealed that feedback sign, feedback specificity, and goal orientation interact to influence receptivity, such that for performance-oriented individuals, specific positive feedback leads to the highest levels of receptivity and specific negative feedback prompts the lowest levels of receptivity. For mastery-oriented participants, however, specific feedback was associated with high levels of receptivity, regardless of whether that feedback was positive or negative. The results are discussed within the context of relative theoretical perspectives. Practical implications, promising avenues of future inquiry, and strengths and limitations of the research are discussed.

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O presente estudo foi desenvolvido com o objetivo de investigar, através de uma perspectiva sociocultural, o que norteia a escolha de diferentes tipos de feedback corretivo por professores de língua estrangeira (LE) ao corrigir a fala de seus alunos. A pesquisa foi realizada em um curso particular de idiomas no sul do Brasil que segue os princípios da abordagem comunicativa, tendo cinco professores como participantes. Este trabalho foi realizado através da observação do comportamento corretivo dos professores atuando com seus próprios alunos durante atividades com foco na forma. Tais atividades foram gravadas em vídeo e, logo após a gravação, foram comentadas pelos professores durante entrevistas com a pesquisadora, as quais também foram gravadas em vídeo. Houve uma terceira gravação que consistiu em uma entrevista entre a pesquisadora e cada professor participante para conversarem sobre as percepções dos professores a respeito de tratamento corretivo e diferentes tipos de feedback. A análise das transcrições das gravações resultou em um levantamento e uma descrição das escolhas corretivas de cada professor individualmente e uma descrição do padrão de comportamento quanto à opção por feedback reformulador e/ou feedback elicitativo. Verifiquei que os cinco professores estudados - mesmo tendo experiências, tempo de prática e formação diferentes - consideram principalmente os seguintes fatores quando decidem optar por tipos de feedback: como julgam que o aluno está se sentindo no momento, como vêem a personalidade do aluno e como julgam ser a capacidade lingüística e a capacidade emocional do aluno.

Context. Nowadays, mobile applications and services have occupied an essential part in our daily life. We use them to fulfill our needs for communication, news, or entertainment. Within a fierce competitive market, mobile applications need continually improvement through collections of user feedback to satisfy users’ needs. However, in mobile applications, lack of a comprehensive consideration in designing feedback mechanism makes it difficult to efficiently collect user feedback. It shows only approximate one third online user reviews that contain helpful information for improvement. In addition, users may be disturbed by feedback request, result in rejecting to provide feedback. Objectives. This study aims to provide a comprehensive consideration for elicitation of user feedback in mobile applications. Methods. This study followed a mixed qualitative-quantitative research approach. Firstly, we conducted an experiment and a semi-structured interview to investigate how do users provide feedback when they are using a mobile application. Then a content analysis and a statistical analysis were conducted for analyzing collected data.    Results. Users’ preference of feedback approaches and the encouraging/discouraging factors for users to provide feedback were identified. We also assessed user-perceived suitable timings for interruption of feedback request. Conclusions. The result shows, generally, users prefer to provide feedback when asked by feedback request. Three encouraging factors and Three discouraging factors are identified. The beginning of mobile application execution is perceived as best moment for interruption of feedback request. In addition, this study also provides a three-time-dimensions approach for researching disturbances caused by interruption of feedback request as well as other peripheral information.

This research investigated whether the same attributes that cause managers to improve performance following upward feedback also encourage subordinates to give open and honest upward feedback. By proving that these attributes encourage integrity in upward feedback, this research allows organisations to freely implement programmes to increase the desired attributes among employees without fear of jeopardising the desired integrity of the feedback.Three hundred and twenty eight employees of a prominent South African company gave an indication of the levels of self-efficacy, learning goal orientation, organisational cynicism and integrity of upward feedback in the organisation. Statistical testing carried out on the resulting data then gave an indication of the relationships between the above-mentioned attributes or variables.It was found that there is a positive relationship between self-efficacy and upward feedback integrity, a positive relationship between learning goal orientation and upward feedback integrity and a strong negative relationship between organisational cynicism and upward feedback integrity. These results confirm that organisations can promote the attributes of self-efficacy and learning goal orientation in their employees without fear of jeopardising integrity in their upward feedback process. Conversely, the amount of organisational cynicism must be reduced wherever possible as it acts against the upward feedback mechanism. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

Methods of designing multivariable feedback control systems based on system eigenvalues and matrix diagonalization are discussed. It is shown that these methods allow single-variable graphical analysis and design techniques to be applied to multivariable systems. The experimental determination of system eigenvalues is shown to be feasible. The suitability of these methods in conjunction with simulation studies for investigation and design purposes is also shown. A simulated two-axis tracking system is used to compare the eigenvalue method and the diagonalized method. The eigenvalue method is applied to a system of four parallel-operated synchronous machines and graphical methods of stability investigation are discussed. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Electrical and Computer Engineering, Department of / Graduate

In many control, data-processing, and communication systems, sampling is an inherent part of the system. If the time-continuous input signal is nonbandlimited, and noise is introduced in the system, an unavoidable error exists between the actual reconstructed signal and the desired time-continuous output signal. This error can be reduced by the suitable choice of prefilter prior to sampling and by the suitable choice of post-filter for reconstructing the time-continuous signal from the samples. In this thesis, an algorithm for determining the jointly optimal pre and post-filters which minimize the frequency weighted mean-integral-squared error of the system is presented, and the validity of the algorithm is proved. In the analysis, no restrictions are placed on the input signal spectrum or the noise spectrum, and the cross-correlation between signal and noise is taken into account. Applications of the optimization algorithm to M-channel time-multiplexed PAM systems, PCM systems with digital channels errors, and DPCM systems are considered. Performance characteristics, showing mean-squared error and inband signal-to-noise ratio versus channel signal-to-noise ratio, are determined explicitly for optimal pre and postfiltered PAM and PCM systems with first-order Butterworth input spectrum. These characteristics are compared with those of PAM and PCM systems which use suboptimal filtering schemes and with the optimal performance theoretically attainable. Performance characteristics, showing mean-squared error versus channel capacity, are also determined for PAM, PCM, and DPCM systems when the systems parameters are optimized to yield the least mean-squared error for a given channel capacity. Because of the subjective nature of speech, the effect of pre and postfilters in PAM, PCM and DPCM communication systems for speech transmission is studied by simulation methods and evaluated with subjective tests. Weak noise pre and postfilters (WNF), which yield virtually the same performance as optimal pre and postfilters, are considered in the subjective evaluation, in addition to lowpass pre and postfilters (LPF). The digital simulation facilities and the subjective testing methods are described, and the subjective results interpreted. It was observed that no significant subjective improvement resulted when WNF were used in place of LPF in PAM and DPCM systems. In PCM systems, significant differences in WNF and LPF subjective performances could exist. Using the analytical results, an explanation for the subjective behaviour is presented. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Electrical and Computer Engineering, Department of / Graduate

Negative feedback can be applied to an electromagnetic seismometer through the coil terminals using a Maxwell impedance bridge to bypass the coil impedance. The application of feedback by this method obviates the need for a second transducer, and permits direct calibration of the feedback seismometer. Feedback of a simulated ground acceleration proportional to the acceleration of the suspended mass effectively increases the mass, lengthening the natural period of the seismometer. Displacement feedback effectively stiffens the spring, decreasing the resonant period, while the seismometer damping can be increased with velocity feedback. Experimentally determined sensitivity curves obtained with a Willmore Mk.I. seismometer demonstrate the capabilities of negative feedback in altering the response of the seismometer. A resonant period of 17 sec. corresponding to an equivalent suspended mass of 1230 kg. is readily obtained. A discussion of instrument noise in the feedback seismometer is included. / Science, Faculty of / Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, Department of / Graduate