Teachers Helping EFL Students Improve Their Writing Through Written Feedback: The Case of Native and Non-native English-Speaking Teachers' Beliefs.

Xiaolong Cheng,Lawrence Jun Zhang

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.804313

Abstract

Although the efficacy of teacher written feedback has been widely investigated, relatively few studies have been conducted from feedback practitioners' perspectives to investigate teachers' beliefs regarding it, particularly compare beliefs held by teachers with different sociocultural and linguistic backgrounds. Consequently, much remains to be known about teachers' conceptions about written feedback, who has different first languages (L1). To bridge such a gap, we conducted this qualitative study to examine the similarities and differences between native English-speaking (NES) and non-native English-speaking (NNES) teachers' beliefs in Chinese University EFL settings. We analyzed the in-depth interviews with eight teachers through thematic analysis. The findings showed that NES and NNES teachers espoused a range of beliefs in relation to the five themes of written feedback: Purpose, scope, focus, strategy, and orientation. While they shared similar beliefs with regard to feedback focus, their beliefs differed in terms of feedback scope. Important implications are discussed for educational practices.

Highlights

All the participants acknowledged the importance and value of written feedback, stating that it was writing teachers’ responsibility to offer feedback to their students and that it played an irreplaceable role in L2 writing classrooms
Anchored in Chinese University EFL writing settings, this study investigated written feedback from the perspective of teachers’ beliefs
It shows that native English-speaking (NES) and non-native English-speaking (NNES) teachers held a set of written feedback beliefs in different dimensions, and there were similarities and differences between the two groups of teachers’ beliefs

Summary

Introduction

Writing in a second/foreign language poses a great challenge to both teachers and students In the learning-to-write process, students expect teachers to offer them feedback and teachers do take feedback provision as one of the significant pedagogical procedures in teaching writing (Li et al, 2020; Teng and Zhang, 2020, 2021; Zhang and Zhang, 2020; Cheng and Zhang, 2021a,b). Feedback can be offered to students at the global or local levels depending on the learning task expected to be completed (Chen and Zhang, 2017; Rahimi and Zhang, 2021; Zhang et al, 2021). Embedded in the pedagogical contexts, feedback functions to facilitate students’ learning process and improve their learning outcomes (Sadler, 1989; Hattie and Timperley, 2007; Zhang, 2018; Gan et al, 2021). As a crucial type of feedback and popular instructional activity, teacher written feedback is extensively employed in L2 writing instruction and it is believed to scaffold L2 writers’ writing

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Discussion

Conclusion