Using Directive and Facilitative Feedback to Improve Student Writing: A Case Study of a Higher Education Setting in Cambodia

Abstract

This paper discusses how two feedback strategies, directive and facilitative, were used in two essay writing classes in the English Language Support Unit (ELSU) at the Royal University of Phnom Penh (RUPP). The study investigated the effects of the two strategies in two types of essay, (1) classification and (2) comparison and contrast, examined the types of student errors, and explored their causes. The student writing data were enhanced through follow-up interviews with each of the participants and through triangulation with the evaluations of a second teacher. The findings of this study show that facilitative feedback may be more effective in improving certain revisions of essays, and directive feedback with others. These results may be useful for university instructors, teachers, teacher trainers, and senior high school teachers who wish to improve their students’ writing. Helping students to improve writing in the drafting stages is a contentious topic for teachers who are often not sure how best to improve the wide variety of errors in students’ essays. Two questions arise for the teacher: Should teachers focus more on linguistic errors and grammar issues? Or should teachers help students develop the content of the essay? Students exhibit their own individual problems. Some students still struggle with sentence structure and vocabulary. Others have poor essay organization and unfocused ideas. Some students experience more complex problems – errors in the use of vocabulary, sentence structure, and essay structure. As a result, they fail to clearly set out main ideas to support the topic. They also seem unable to clarify their points of view with examples, facts, and explanations, so their arguments seem weak. The question arises, therefore, as to what techniques the teacher should use to help students individually improve their essays. Directive and facilitative feedback, two interactive strategies to improve students’ writing, can be used in this context. Directive strategies use teachers’ and classmates’ suggestions and comments about errors related to grammar issues, sentence structure, and vocabulary. Teachers and students may also use corrective symbols to identify and improve in correcting linguistic errors and improve sentence structure. Since each essay genre utilizes specific linguistic transitional words and a specific structure, directive strategies are also useful to point out specific linguistic errors in the thesis statements and topic sentences, as well as with unity and coherence in the body paragraphs. Facilitative strategies, on the other hand, focus on teachers’ and classmates’ questions or comments about the development of ideas and content,