The Impact of Teacher Written Feedback on ESL Writers

Abstract

This thesis examines the effects of written teacher feedback on the development of English as a second language writers. The context was a university course in English proficiency preparing students for academic study. Three students in each of two classes were case study subjects. Data included questionnaire responses, interviews, teacher think-aloud protocols, classroom observations and student writing. Written teacher feedback and student revisions were catalogued and analysed to investigate the relationship between feedback and revision. Further information was obtained through a longitudinal examination of each student's writing throughout the course. The teachers and students adopted different stances to feedback. One teacher placed feedback within a process model of writing, emphasising the importance of reader response, while the other saw knowledge of the academic discourse community as the crucial factor when giving feedback. In contrast, the students wanted their teacher's written feedback to address language accuracy, as well as aspects of meaning and academic issues. Despite their stances, the analysis of the feedback shows that the teachers mainly took on the role of corrector of texts. Very small proportions of the feedback were focused on academic issues, even though such feedback was more extensively used by the students in their revisions and appeared to have long-term effects on their writing. There were also some fundamental differences in the value that teachers and students placed on written feedback and this led to some communication breakdowns. One such breakdown is analysed in detail for each of the case study students. The students strongly believed that written feedback was helpful and tried to use as much of it as possible in an active way while the teachers were more sceptical, seeing student use of feedback, especially grammatical feedback, as a passive process. Past experiences of feedback were also found to have an effect on the students' expectations and use of current feedback. A number of pedagogical implications are suggested. First, teachers need to monitor their own feedback practices to check for discrepancies between their beliefs and the actual feedback they give. Teachers also need to recognise that their students have individual needs and expectations of feedback and they should improve communication by opening up a dialogue with students on feedback issues. They should give students greater autonomy to develop their own sources of feedback and strategies for revising, by encouraging them to monitor their own revision practices.