Cybernetics: A Model for Feedback in the ESL Classroom *

When students communicate in the ESL classroom, the messages teachers send back are critical: these messages inform students about their language performance. Feedback in second language instruction, however, has received scant attention and is usually thought of as reinforcing rather than informational. Cybernetics, a theory of communication that is concerned with the clear and unambiguous transmission of messages, stresses the informational importance of feedback, suggesting the interdependent and reciprocal nature of the sender and receiver of these messages (in this case the language teacher and learner). The cybernetic model assumes the existence of a dynamic system in which feedback that provides specific and relevant information can affect and alter behavior. The model thus provides us a framework with which to view both the communicators and the communications in the ESL classroom; it implies the kind of feedback that the learner can both assimilate and act upon.