VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY - HA NOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
DEPARTMENT OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES
******************

LÊ THỊ THU HÀ

FEEDBACK ON ESL WRITING: TEACHERS’ PRACTICES AND
STUDENTS’ PREFERENCES
HOẠT ĐỘNG THỰC TẾ CỦA GIẢNG VIÊN VÀ MONG MUỐN CỦA
SINH VIÊN ĐỐI VỚI PHẢN HỒI TRÊN BÀI VIẾT TIẾNG ANH

M.A MINOR THESIS

Field: English Language Teaching Methodology
Code: 60140111

HANOI - 2013
VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY - HA NOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
DEPARTMENT OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES
******************

LÊ THỊ THU HÀ

FEEDBACK ON ESL WRITING: TEACHERS’ PRACTICES AND
STUDENTS’ PREFERENCES
HOẠT ĐỘNG THỰC TẾ CỦA GIẢNG VIÊN VÀ MONG MUỐN CỦA

Technologies and Economics in Trade for their constant support as well as
suggestions for this paper.
Especially, I am grateful to the students in the three classes which I am in
charge for their actively taking part in completing the writing tasks and answering
the survey questionnaires. Without their help, this study could not have been
completed.
Finally, my special thanks go to my family and my friends who have been
beside me and have encouraged me a lot to fulfill my study.

iii

ABSTRACT
This case study was conducted at College of Technologies and Economics in Trade
to investigate teachers’ practices and students’ strategies for handling the feedback
they received as well as students’ preferences for four different types of feedback.
Fifty seven students in three ESL classes were asked to fill out the questionnaires
and three writing teachers were asked to participate in the interviews. In addition,
students’ paragraphs with teacher feedback were analyzed to see how teacher gave
the feedback and how students responded to the feedback they received. The results
show that teachers used written feedback frequently, but in different ways; and
students’ strategies for handling feedback varied depending on the types of
feedback each teacher gave on their papers. Besides, the study revealed that
students preferred teacher feedback (teacher correction, teacher correction with
comments, error identification) to non-teacher feedback such as self-feedback, peer-
feedback or computer- directed feedback. The findings of the study suggests that
writing teachers should consider the fit between their practice and students’
preferences to choose the most suitable ways of feedback giving to help students
improve their writing.
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3. Scope of the study 3
4. Significance of the study 4
5. Research methods 4
6. Organization of the study 5
Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 6
1. Definitions of feedback 6
2. Roles of feedback in teaching ESL/EFL writing 7
3. Types of feedback 8
3.1. Teacher feedback 9
3.1.1. Student-teacher conferencing 9
3.1.2. Teacher written feedback 10
3.2. Peer feedback 12
3.3. Self-feedback 13
3.4. Computer- assisted feedback 13
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4. Teachers’ beliefs and practices of giving feedback on ESL writing 14
5. Students’ reactions and preferences for feedback 15
Chapter 3: THE STUDY 18
1. The current situation of teaching and learning English writing at CTET 18
2. Methodology 20
2.1. The participants 20
2.2. Methods and Instrumentation 20
2.2.1. Students’ compositions 20
2.2.2. Questionnaire and interview 21
2.3. Data collection procedure 21
2.4. Data analysis procedure 22
Chapter 4: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 23
1. Teachers’ practices of giving feedback on ESL writing 23
2. Students’ reactions to the received teacher feedback 28

students. Over the first semester of the first years, the students are introduced to
some basic concepts in Grammar (parts of speech and word function), Syntax
(phrases, clauses, and sentences), and Mechanics (capitalization and punctuation). It
is until the second semester that students are introduced to basic writing, ranging
from writing informal letters/email to business letter, then writing paragraphs and
essays for the third and the forth semester. They are taught different forms of
letters/email and techniques for paragraph and essay writing including writing topic
sentence, introduction, developmental paragraphs and conclusion. Besides, they are
provided with insights into different patterns of essay development such as
cause/effect, comparison/contrast or argumentation. The third year is by far an
2

opportunity for them to practice writing essays with different patterns of
development.
Teaching English writing is not an easy task for ESL teachers as it involves
various processes which require teachers to devote a lot of time to helping students
write better. Planning what to teach within a particular curriculum is only a part of
the task. Besides, they have to consider the different approaches that gleaned from
theories and researches on teaching writing in ESL contexts. Teachers also spend a
great deal of time in the post-writing process grading students’ compositions in
detail. Especially, it is the teachers’ jobs to select the approach that best fits the
learners’ needs and create a motivating environment, and facilitate the learning-to-
write activity. The teacher can do so by widening the area of interaction between
him and his students. The best means for teacher-student interaction may be
insightful feedback which helps both improving students’ writing production and
motivating them to be independent writers. Therefore, most teachers believe that
feedback is an important aspect of teaching of writing.
However, providing effective feedback is one of the many challenges that
any writing teacher faces. In ESL classroom, feedback practices can be even more
challenging. Teachers and students agree that teacher written feedback is a crucial

1. The study was conducted with the participation of the second-year
students in three CTA classes and 3 teachers of English in the Faculty of Foreign
Languages, College of Technologies and Economics in Trade in the academic year
2013. These students study Business English as their major.
2. The study focuses on four different types of feedback on students’ English
writing. The types of feedback used in the study are (1) Teacher feedback with four
sub-types, (2) Peer feedback, (3) Self- feedback, and (4) Computer-assisted
feedback.
4

3. The study investigated two issues. Firstly, the real situation of teachers’
practices and students’ reactions to feedback on ESL writing was studied. Secondly,
the study investigates students’ preferences to four different types of feedback.
4. Significance of the study
Theoretically, the study proves teacher’s feedback to students’ writing is
undeniably a key component and a crucial part of the process. Feedback offers a
number of advantages. Indeed, it “helps students to improve their writing by
communicating feedback detailed enough to allow students to act, to commit to
change in their writing” (Reid, 1993). It also gives the teachers a better chance of
closely following the progress of students, both in terms of the feedback offered and
revision made.
Practically, the study shows that using feedback not only helps students
recognize and correct the mistakes to become more professional writers, but also
give teachers chances to understand students’ needs and choose the most suitable
approaches of writing teaching. The study also offers teachers some implications to
improve teaching writing.
5. Research methods
To meet the research aforementioned aims, document analysis and
questionnaire survey together with interview were used in this study.
First, a sample of 57 paragraphs of English written by students with teacher’s

1. Definitions of feedback
Before discussing issues concerning to feedback, it is necessary to present a
clear definition of the term “feedback”. In the literature, various researchers define
the term “feedback” in different ways. Some researchers consider feedback as a
form of revision, for example, Keh (1990) defines that feedback is “input from a
reader to a writer with the effect of providing information to the writer for
revision”. Hence, feedback is supposed to show learners what is right or wrong in
order for them to produce better texts in future. Sharing the same opinion with Keh,
Phil (2007) says that “feedback is when you receive comments about your work, so
that you know how well your studies are going – and of course there’s the other
side to this – so you know how badly your studies are going”. So, through feedback,
the writers raise awareness of their strength and learn where they misled or
confused to identify action to be taken to improve the next performance. Besides,
“feedback is part of the overall dialogue or interaction between teacher and
learner, not a one-way communication” (Judy, 2007). It means feedback is a way of
interaction between teachers and learners, more broadly between readers and
writers. It can be an effective means to communicate to the students about their
writing. Through feedback, teachers can understand more about learners; and
learners learn from the comments of the teachers. Especially, feedback could be
“consider a motivator that increase a general behavior” (Kulhavy & Wager, 1993).
For example, positive feedback, such as praise, strengthens students’ motivation
and self-confidence.
Through the definitions reviewed, feedback is also an indispensable part of
writing development. Feedback in writing is the information that is given to the
learner about his or her performance of writing, usually with the objective of
improving this performance. Feedback on ESL writing means advice, criticism or
information about how good student’s writing is or what errors are in the student’s
7

writing. It can be provided by writers themselves, peers, and teachers or innovative

certain standards. The feedback that they receive draws students’ attention to those
aspects of their writing that need remediation, and by doing so, they learn how to
improve their performance. The increase of attention will lead to writing
improvement which can be defined as a gain in accuracy in both form and content
of writing as indicated by Ashwell (2000)
Moreover, feedback plays an important role in improving the students’
motivation in language learning, especially in writing. Ellis (2009) indicated that in
both structural and communicative approaches to language teaching, feedback is
considered as a way of inspiring learner motivation and increasing linguistic
accuracy. Nazifah & Shafiq (2012) also argues the roles of feedback that
“incorporating feedback in writing is an effective approach in writing lesson as it
can foster the students’ motivation, improve their language proficiency as well as
promote their great achievement in writing performance.”
3. Types of feedback
In recent years, studies of language education have given considerable
attention to the issue of how and who to provide feedback to students’ writing.
However, researchers still discuss the questions of what types of feedback would be
the most effective one to improve students’ writing skill and fit the needs of
particular students. Through the literature reviewed, feedback has been categorized
into various types of feedback based on feedback functions, media, focus, source,
and strategy. However, in the present study, the writer reviewed four main types of
feedback: teacher feedback, peer feedback, self- feedback and computer-assisted
feedback.

9

3.1. Teacher feedback
Teacher feedback is defined as “any input provided by the teacher to
students for revision” (Keh, 1990), and this includes both content and form. In ESL
writing teaching and learning, teachers provides feedback on student writing to

(2010) stated that “when there is a dialogue between student and teacher, the
student may ask for help in a particular area or ask what effect the writing has on
the teacher-as-reader; the teacher may ask about the students’ goals, their
impressions of the strongest parts of their writing and their thoughts on what they
have learned through writing a particular composition.”
Though Bitchenere (2005) provided an evidence for the effectiveness of
student-teacher conferencing as a way of providing feedback to students’ writing;
he also showed that there may be some disadvantages to it: “when the number of
students in a class is over forty, there may be difficulties in arranging a twenty-
minute student-teacher conference for each student.” This means that teacher-
student conferencing seems to be suitable only to small classes with about 10 -15
students. It also requires teachers much more time and energy to do this task.
3.1.2. Teacher written feedback
Teacher written feedback is a primary method to respond to students’
writings to assist students’ writing development. Surveys of students’ feedback
preferences generally indicate that ESL students prefer teacher feedback to other
forms such as peer feedback or self- feedback (Saito, 1994; Zhang, 1995). Most
students see a teacher as the only source of authority value teacher revision highly
than other methods because they have confidence in the teacher’s knowledge and
skills in English. In fact, teacher written feedback on students’ draft helps indicate
students’ problems and make suggestions for improvement of future papers.
Besides, through feedback, teacher can help students compare their own
performance with the ideal and to realize their own strengths and weaknesses.
11

Researchers have tried to find out what kinds of teacher feedback are the
most effective. Roberts (2001) examined the effectiveness of teacher written
feedback with three types: errors marked with codes; errors underlined with no
codes; and no error feedback at all. Before that, when discussing the types of
feedback, Saito (1994) categorized teacher written feedback into three main types as

proficiency students may be unable to correct errors marked by teachers, so they
prefer teachers to give all the corrections for their mistakes.
Commentary, as defined by Saito (1994), is “when teacher provides feedback
by making written comments or questions on the margins or in between sentences
without any error corrections made”. As discussed in the literature on ESL
teaching, there are very few studies about teachers’ commentary as a means of
feedback in teaching writing; and teachers seem less likely to use commentary on
ESL students' writing. In the research of Zamel (1985), he revealed that ESL
teachers' comment tended to ignore the content or ideas in students' writing in favor
of attention to grammatical errors. Besides, other researchers such as Cardelle &
Como (1981).have suggested that positive written comments along with specific
comments on errors may be an effective way to motivate students to improve their
revisions of their writing.
3.2. Peer feedback
Peer feedback is a useful assessment-for-learning tool that has been shown to
support students’ writing development and contribute to students’ revisions to
improve their writing (Peterson, 2013). As defined by Saito (1994), peer feedback is
that “students evaluate each other’s work in pairs or with a whole class”. It benefits
not only the students who receive suggestions for improving the writing, but also
the feedback providers, as they gains a greater awareness of qualities of good
writing through assessing and commenting on peer’s writing. Peer feedback also
develops students’ self-assessment abilities, as they gain experience in using the
criteria to read their own writing (Cho & MacArthur, 2010; Lundstrom & Baker,
2009). However, it is important for ESL teachers to teach students how to give
13

feedback to their peers and how to work with the feedback. Researchers recommend
that students should be guided by teacher modeling and assessment criteria.
3.3. Self-feedback
Self-feedback, or self-correction, or self-assessment, means that students

for “mark scheme clarity, feedback legibility, information on deficient aspects, and
identification of those parts of the work where students did well”. Many teachers
also like using the software because it saves their time and energy. However,
Matsumara (2004), who investigated the influence of computer-anxiety on the
preferences of students for face-to-face teacher feedback, computer-based feedback,
and peer feedback in EFL writing classes, showed that student’s attitudes toward
computer-directed feedback varied depending on their level of computer anxiety.
4. Teachers’ beliefs and practices of giving feedback on ESL writing
Teacher beliefs, which have been a common focus of previous studies in
ESL education, are important aspects that influence teachers’ practice. Borg (2001)
defines teacher belief as “a set of consciously or unconsciously held propositions
that serves as a reflection and a guide to the teacher’s thought and behaviors”.
However, very few studies have investigated teacher beliefs and perceptions about
feedback, and even fewer that explore the correspondence or difference between
students’ preferences and teachers’ practices for feedback giving.
In a recent study in an EFL context in Hong Kong, Lee (2003) compared
teachers’ feedback beliefs with teachers’ feedback practices. She found that
although many teachers believe in giving selective error correction feedback, most
teachers surveyed still mark papers comprehensively. Lee (2004), also comparing
teachers and students’ beliefs in Hong Kong, added the extra element of comparing
teacher beliefs, attitudes, and perceptions to student beliefs, attitudes, and
perceptions. She found that both students and teachers in this context preferred
comprehensive marking and that teachers use only limited strategies in their
feedback practices. Another research of Montgomery and Baker (2007) who
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surveyed 98 students and ten teachers showed that teachers’ perceptions of the
amount of feedback that they give are generally lower than students’ perceptions. In
investigating the relationship between the teachers’ beliefs and actual feedback
provided, Lee (2003) indicated that teachers may not have provided feedback in the

revise their papers. In the study of Shamshad & Faizah (2009), it can be seen that
students respond differently to different types of feedback. “Some students might
respond positively to content-focused feedback because they might possess some
writing skills as well as the content knowledge of the topic. On the other hand, there
are students who respond positively to form-focused feedback due to factors such as
the instructional context itself and the perception of students themselves towards the
meaning of a good essay.” For instance, to teachers’ commentary, the study showed
that “students use various strategies to respond to teachers’ commentary such as
following closely the corrections made by the teacher or avoiding the corrections
altogether by not incorporating them in their revision process.”( Shamshad &
Faizah, 2009)
Recently, many studies have discussed students’ preferences to feedback on
writing such as Radecki & Swales (1988), Cohen & Cavalcanti (1990), Leki (1991),
Lee (2008), and April (2011). Generally, results from the studies show that both
undergraduate and graduate students noted the importance of feedback that was
clear, provided positive comments, and was constructive (April, 2011). Specifically,
participants appreciated feedback that provided them information on the overall
structure and approach of their essays and that focused on the key points of their
work. Positive comments were recognized as motivating, and students reported
being receptive to a balance of positive and critical comments if the focus was
improvement. Besides, most students from the studies prefer all their mistakes to be
corrected when they receive feedback from teachers or colleagues. For instance, in a
survey of 59 ESL students’ attitudes towards feedback on their written work,
Radecki & Swales (1988) emphasized that ESL teachers might lose their credibility
among their students if they do not correct all surface errors because findings
17

revealed that students seem to need and expect correction of all errors. Also,
according to Cohen & Cavalcanti (1990) who investigated nine EFL Brazilian
students’ responses to their teacher’s commentary, the students reported that the