Teachers’ beliefs and practices of feedback and preferences of students for feedback in university level EFL writing classrooms

Abstract

This study examines teachers’ beliefs and practices of feedback in their writing classrooms, focusing particularly on the factors that shape these beliefs and practices. It also investigates junior and senior students’ preferences for feedback and their problems and strategies for handling feedback. It explores students’ reasons for their preferences. Further, it diagnoses the impact of students’ experience on their preferences, problems and strategies. It identifies the matches and mismatches between preferences of students and teachers’ practices. To achieve these objectives, junior and senior students’ data from questionnaire and interview were integrated, and teachers’ data from questionnaire, interview and analysis of teachers’ written feedback were triangulated.
The findings suggest that not all teachers’ beliefs about feedback are translated into their practices. The factors shape teachers’ beliefs and practices are contextual factors (time allocated to writing classes, classroom size and availability of resources), teacher factors (teachers’ experiences with feedback as teachers and as student, teachers’ knowledge and their training) and student factors (students’ level of proficiency and students’ needs and preferences). The teachers’ ways of providing feedback are also guided by several pedagogical reasons (e.g. securing students’ understanding of feedback, prompting students’ engagement with feedback, meeting students’ needs).
The results also reveal that the students seem to value feedback on their writing. However, there are some differences between junior and senior students’ preferences for the different aspects of feedback and differences between their difficulties and strategies for handling feedback. These results indicate that students’ experience has an impact on their preferences and ability to deal with feedback. Junior students seem to be more dependent on their teachers and classmates than senior students are. The findings also identify some differences between teachers’ practices and students’ views. This suggests that teachers’ practices may not always influence students’ preferences.
These findings imply that feedback might be more effective if teachers consider their context of teaching, students’ experience, students’ proficiency level and needs. They also need to work cooperatively for extending their knowledge about feedback and developing their ways of providing feedback. The educational authorities need to offer information resources and training opportunities to enhance teachers’ professional development in responding to students’ writing effectively.

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