Abstract
Studies on students’ responses to tutor feedback have been conducted in large scales, in particular, focusing on students’ perceptions of tutor feedback. However, few of these studies have examined how students respond to tutors’ written feedback in their writing. In order to broaden the understanding of a student’s response to a tutor’s feedback, this study examines tutors’ written feedback, students’ writings, and their perceptions of the feedback. Based on this examination, this study aims to see what types of tutor feedback do students incorporate in their revisions and what the students think of tutor feedback. The participants were 11 tutors and 18 college students. Each student received tutor feedback on two writing assignments—a compare-and-contrast essay and an argumentative essay—and filled out a questionnaire that asked about their experiences with the feedback they received. The analysis of students’ writing and tutor feedback reveal that error type and feedback type seem to affect a student’s incorporation of feedback; in particular, students incorporated content-oriented, indirect, and coded types of feedback more than the other feedback types. The questionnaire data show that most students valued the tutor feedback; however, low incorporators had more problems in incorporating tutor feedback. Based on these results, suggestions on tutor feedback and implications for future studies are discussed.
Highlights
The system of using tutors in assisting classroom teachers has been widely adopted in many areas of academic settings in English-speaking countries, such as the United States and the United Kingdom
The results show that the difference between Grammar and Content is statistically significant at the level of 0.05 (χ2 = 12.024, df = 1, p = 0.00), which means, students incorporated tutor feedback on Content (e.g., Contents, Elaboration, Off-topic, Clarification, Coherence, and Evidence) more than feedback on grammatical mistakes
The analysis of tutor feedback incorporation by error type reveals that the more often the students received each type of feedback, the more they incorporated them in their revisions
Summary
The system of using tutors in assisting classroom teachers has been widely adopted in many areas of academic settings in English-speaking countries, such as the United States and the United Kingdom. Studies on tutor feedback have revealed that because of their awareness of the advantages that tutor feedback have on them, students seem to value tutor feedback (Hyland, 2013; Nicol & MacFarlane-Dick 2006; Sadler, 1989; Sendziuk, 2010; Taras, 2003, 2006;). These studies were mostly conducted in the framework of formative assessment, that is, assessment of the students’ learning, and arrived at a similar eISSN: 2550-2131 ISSN: 1675-8021
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
