Second language writers' autonomy

Abstract

Many second language writers repeat errors after receiving corrective feedback, indicating that traditional corrective feedback is inadequate for many second language (L2) writers trying to gain autonomy in L2 academic writing. This qualitative study employed Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) to explore L2 writers' experiences with a nontraditional form of corrective feedback, known as color-coded feedback, in terms of awareness of error tendencies and gaining L2 writing autonomy. The noticing hypothesis of Richard Schmidt provided a theoretical framework. This study occurred over one semester with four undergraduate pathways students at a competitive university in northeastern United States. This study found that L2 writers' experiences with corrective feedback are closely tied to their learning English and to the prior corrective feedback they experienced. The participants shared intense descriptions of experiences with traditional corrective feedback and strongly positive descriptions of color-coded feedback, regarding the potential to increase awareness of error tendencies and increase autonomy in L2 writing. All participants expressed a desire to make their own corrections, except for word choice errors and complex linguistic errors, in which case they wanted suggestions and/or corrections from teachers.Keywords: corrective feedback, color-coded feedback, second language writing, indirect corrective feedback, error corrections, awareness, noticing, autonomy, international nonnative English-speaking students, the noticing hypothesis --Author's abstract