EFL Writing Teachers’ and Students’ Perceptions, Preferences and Practices of Written Corrective Feedback Techniques in Improving Grammatical Accuracy

Abstract

This study surveyed English as a Foreign Language (EFL) writing teachers‟ and their first-year students‟ perceptions, preferences and practices of written corrective feedback techniques in improving writing accuracy. The subjects of the study were EFL writing instructors who were offering the Basic Writing/Sophomore English course at Wollo University and their first year students. To achieve the objectives of the study, data were gathered by using questionnaires from 60 randomly selected students and 11 writing teachers. Results indicated that all the writing instructors and their students perceived corrective feedback as very important in improving written accuracy. To this effect, most of the students preferred to have unfocused corrective feedback (UFCF), but most of the writing teachers believed focused corrective feedback (FCF) to be more effective. In addition, a majority of the students preferred to have direct corrective feedback (DCF) followed by a combination of direct and indirect corrective feedback (IDCF) whereas a majority of the teachers believed that a combination of DCF and IDCF could be more effective. Regarding to practice, a majority of the students indicated that their writing teachers were most frequently employing DCF; on the other hand, most of the writing teachers reported that they were most frequently practicing a combination of DCF and IDCF. Besides, most of the students indicated that UFCF was most frequently employed while most of the writing teachers said that they most frequently exercised FCF. It could, therefore, be seen that the writing teachers were practicing what they perceived to be effective. However, there were several mismatches between what the teachers said to have been practicing and what the students said to have been receiving. In addition, there were some mismatches between what the teachers perceived as effective and what the students believed as effective. This indicates the presence of some communication gaps between teachers and students regarding what CF techniques are practiced on the students‟ written pieces and why.