Chapter 5 discusses SLA and intervention studies with inflectional morphemes, functional elements that mark such grammatical distinctions as tense, subject–verb agreement, and grammatical gender. Inflectional morphology is known to present a challenge to learners and has been the subject of multiple intervention studies. Chapter 5 begins with an overview about the debate in SLA concerning whether learners’ difficulties with inflectional morphology reflect underlying syntactic impairments or more surface problems. The chapter then reviews intervention studies on tense marking that use processing instruction, intervention studies on verbal morphology that use more explicit vs. more implicit instructional approaches, and intervention studies on grammatical gender that vary the types of feedback that learners receive. The target languages of the intervention studies include both English and several Romance languages (Spanish, Italian, and French).

The feedback of teachers for their learners is most effective when it is based on statements of individual students, because feedback is quite often a reciprocal procedure. To obtain the possible impact, students must perceive the different forms and aspects of feedback as a help for further learning in an adequate manner. Teachers have to pay attention to the formulation, timing, and many other principles of feedback. In this context, an important asset is diagnostic assessment and the respective feedback, which should not be seen in contrast to but as a complement to learning-level assessment. Another distinction has to be made with regard to the different feedback procedures related to the content and the task, the learning processes, and the self-regulation of the learners. Hattie and colleagues show how teachers can induce the learners in different ways to give some sort of feedback about how they are able to benefit from the behavior of the teacher. This can be done at the end of a more or less extensive teaching unit.

The prerequisites of successfull feedback is classroom management that is destined to create a conducive learning atmosphere. This can be reached by classroom and behavior contracts that learners have to sign and above all apply. Motivation strategies that take the twofold character of motivation into account are another precondition for the implementation of a feedback culture in the second/foreign language classroom. Teachers (and learners) have to consider that not every feedback is useful. If it comes to early, if it is not formulated in a learner-friendly manner and and if it does not reach the student to whom it is intended.

Feedback in everday communication is compared to assessment and feedback practices in the school context. Whereas feedback in real life is mostly used to clarify misunderstandings, there is a great variety of applications in the teaching and learning context. Feedback in schools should start with positive aspects of the learner’s performance and include valuable advice to improve learning. Feedback in schools in Western countries like the United States, Canada, and European countries apart, certain general rules differ a great deal because the expectations of teachers and learners are quite different. Furthermore, the possibilities to have face-to-face contact with speakers whose mother tongue is the foreign language learned by a student are very limited. Last but not least, the role of the teacher can vary a great deal, and teaching and learning strategies along with it. As examples, foreign language education in China and in Japan is described.

Feedback in its actual forms has gained momentum because many developments in teaching and learning in schools and in the foreign-language classroom in particular have facililtated the implementation of a feedback culture. In the last decades, education in schools has become more and more learner-oriented. On this basis, formative feedback practices have become more and more important and specified in order to help teachers and learners to overcome the concentration on the person of the teacher and on drill-based forms of instruction. Today, feedback is no longer a one-way road, but also reaches teachers and is complemented by various other forms of feedback. This general positive development was further promoted by the changes in foreign-language instruction from the Grammar-Translation-Method to Intercultural Communication, with the aim of coming as close to real-life settings as possible.

The different chapters of the book can be used independently. Teaching examples allow for individual approaches and methods.

As summative assessment, especially in the form of grading, is indispensable, teachers have to think about and apply the pros and cons of grading so that the students can deduce sufficient guidance for their further learning. As this is not done with short written feedback beside the grade – such as “good work” – teachers have to think about the form of feedback and above all about the place where to express their hints for the learner in question. The following section presents some basic suggestions about how and where to apply written feedback in combination with grading (i.e. in the margin column) with the help of a rubric or working with a cover sheet.

In the context of independent learning, self-assessment, be it formative or summative, plays an increasing role in foreign-language teaching and learning. Whereas there is great emphasis on the self-assessment of learners, assessment procedures of teachers are still neglected by most scientists and educational experts. On the contrary, processes of self-assessment of learners are widely recommended, even though the workload of the teachers is quite high. Furthermore, it is dubious if the students, especially younger learners, are able to assess themselves appropriately. In some cases, tools of electronic assessment can be of help, at the expense of personal contacts between teacher and learners and between the students themselves. While the European Language Portfolio, based on the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, is useful in the context of effective self-assessment, it depends mostly on the learning context and the personalities involved.

As scientists and above all practicing teachers are looking for teaching and learning approaches to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic, the most important models are presented. One of the main differences between teaching and learning in the online classroom consist of asynchronous and synchronous forms of instruction. Their advantages and disadvantages are described and explained. This leads to the description of omnipresent procedures of video conferencing, an important teaching and learning tool during the pandemic.

In order to benefit as much as possible from feedback, students must be involved in important decisions. To achieve a useful level of involvement, students should participate in classroom discources as much as possible. Furthermore, teachers should apply the strategy “No hand up, except for asking a question” and recur to cold calling so that every student has to think about the tasks and activities. The main areas for learner involment are suggestions for learning objectives, fixing success criteria, and using rubrics. Advanced learners can also try to redesign a lesson.