Learning How to Use Mitigation Devices: A Peer-Supervisory Context Between a Non-Native Peer-Supervisor and a Non-Native English Teacher

Abstract

Learning how to provide effective supervision can be challenging. After all, helping language teachers increase awareness regarding their teaching practices requires the difficult task of giving them critical feedback, which, at times, can be a face-threatening act as will be defined later in the paper. To soften their criticism, supervisors make use of various language strategies. However, the task of delivering feedback using such language strategies in English can be even more difficult for supervisors who are also second language learners of English. Utilizing the mitigation devices Wajnryb (1994) conceptualized, this study analyzed the language used in three post-observation conferences in a peer-supervisory discourse between a non-native English teacher and a non-native peer-supervisor. The study found that mitigation devices as conceptualized by Wajnryb (1994) were effective in structuring a non-threatening and growth-oriented supervisory context when consciously used by the non-native peer-supervisor.

Keywords
language teacher supervision, mitigation devices, non-native language teacher supervisor, peer-supervision