What are the professional competences required by language teachers in order to provide useful feedback to their learners? In October 2023, the University of Uppsala (Sweden) hosted the Scandinavian conference for language teachers and teacher educators (SKOLU – Skandinavisk konferens för lärare och lärarutbildare i språk) dedicated to the topic of feedback. Lukas Bleichenbacher, lecturer at the University of Teacher Education St.Gallen in Switzerland, was invited to deliver a workshop for participants to reflect on how giving feedback involves a whole range of professional competences. The discussion was illustrated with references to a range of materials produced by the European Centre for Modern Languages (ECML) of the Council of Europe, with a focus on the new Building blocks for planning language-sensitive education resource website. The participants shared their insights on various teacher competences required for feedback, concluding with  a focus on how feedback involves plurilingual, intercultural and cooperative competences, alongside pedagogical ones.

Lukas Bleichenbacher

Mr Bleichenbacher’s participation at the event was enabled through the ECML’s national  support scheme.