Empower students with internal feedback: Unpack the process of internal feedback in language classrooms

Recent research highlights that external feedback alone does not lead to improvements unless students process and use it internally, emphasising the need to shift from a teacher-centred to a student-centred approach. While previous studies have underscored the importance of students generating feedback for their own use and explored effective pedagogical strategies, the process of internal feedback remains under-explored. The current study addresses this gap by examining how 21 university students in China engaged in the internal feedback process during two assessment-for-learning activities (i.e., peer review and reflection on peers’ presentations) in language classrooms. Drawing on (Nicol, 2021) framework of internal feedback, the results identified three stages in the internal feedback process: students generating internal feedback, calibrating it, and then responding to and acting upon it. Comparison emerged as central to all stages, as students compared their work with diverse internal and external sources. Within each stage, teachers’ pedagogical activities played a key role in helping students enact internal feedback, highlighting the positive effect of these activities on students’ generation, calibration, and use of internal feedback. These findings contribute to the research on student-centred feedback, reinforce the role of comparison in internal feedback, and offer insights into how pedagogical activities can facilitate students’ internal feedback process and feedback literacy. Copyright © 2025 De La Salle University.