The purpose of this study was to examine the effect that a writing teacher's written comments had on improvement in L2 writing; whether the types of changes students made in their drafts after teacher comments were substantial at the content level and/or language level; to what extent the focus (content- and language-focused) and the directness (direct and indirect) of teacher feedback predicted improvement in L2 writing; and the teacher's and students' attitudes toward and perception of good writing and the role of teacher comments. The study had three major components. First, a quantitative study was conducted to examine the rate of students' successful revisions in response to the teacher written feedback. Using descriptive statistics, it was found that students revised more successfully in response to language-focused comments and direct comments than in response to content-focused comments and indirect comments. The next phase of the study investigated how the focus and directness of teacher comments resulted in and predicted improvement in writing. Using paired sample t-tests, it was found that teacher's comments on student drafts did lead to overall improvement in the grades on the revised essays. Employing hierarchical regressions, it was also found that higher rates of successful revision in response to content-focused comments and direct comments resulted in higher grades in the subsequent revisions. Using a one-way repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA), it was also found that while students' writing improved significantly for new essay assignments in the area of content, there was no statistically significant improvement in students' linguistic accuracy in their writing over the course of the semester. The final part of the study examined the students' perceived need for teacher feedback and revision, and the teacher's view on writing. Using surveys and interviews, it was found that the teacher and students had different opinions about the role and importance of feedback. The students reported that direct corrections of linguistic errors were less beneficial to them, even though the teacher gave much more direct corrective feedback than indirect feedback over the course of the semester. In addition, while the students expected to have received the grades of each writing assignment, the teacher only commented on the drafts and gave out a single overall grade at the end of semester. The study, using quantitative and qualitative methods to analyze multiple sources of data, presented strong empirical evidence that the content-focused comments and direct comments provided by the teacher contributed to higher grades in the subsequent revisions of the same essay assignment, and that there was no effect of teacher comments, especially direct corrections on linguistic features, on longer-term improvement in L2 writing. These results suggest that when giving written feedback, writing teachers should take into account whether students are developmentally ready to learn the lexical and grammatical forms and structures corrected by teachers. The study, designed as longitudinal study in a real world setting, provided a rich description of the effect of a teacher's commenting practice and L2 writers' revision behaviors. / CITE/Language Arts

The use of instructional technology has opened up new avenues in education with broad implications in the foreign or additional language (L2) learning context. One of the research priorities is to explore student perceptions of the use of such modern means in their education which otherwise might not be anticipated. The present study aimed to determine (a) the perceived affordances as well as limitations of the information and communication technology (ICT) pedagogical application in coded corrective feedback (e-feedback) provision on L2 writing, (b) English as a foreign language (EFL) learners’ perspectives on using e-feedback to reduce their local and global mistakes, and (c) the type of self-regulated learning (SRL) behaviours, according to EFL students’ self-reports, electronic feedback and learning logs called forth in cognitive, affective, and metacognitive domains. The participants (n=48) were high-intermediate to advanced EFL learners from four cohorts enrolled on an International English Language Testing System (IELTS) preparation course in a branch of the Institute of Science and Technology in Tehran. Each cohort went through 84 face-to-face tutorial sessions in four months. During this period, they also wrote essays and received e-feedback on 12 IELTS Writing Task 2 prompts with a minimum of drafting work three times for each on an e-learning platform (www.ekbatani.ir) specially designed for this study. The data from all four cohorts were collected over the course of 11 months, using semi-structured interviews, online structured and unstructured learning logs, and an open-ended questionnaire to provide an in-depth picture of student perceptions of this technology mediation. Through a purely qualitative research design, the log, interview, and open-ended questionnaire data were analysed, categorised and coded. The findings represented students’ perceptions of the benefits of the e-feedback and learning logs as (i) offering a motivating and empowering means of providing EFL writing support, (ii) enhancing the thinking and problem-solving processes, (iii) a flexible and fast scaffolding approach for L2 writing improvement, and (iv) encouraging student writers’ active knowledge construction by helping them notice mistakes, focus on writing specifics, overcome the fear of writing, and grow confidence in L2 learning. The self-reported data indicated perceived limitations including (i) the time-consuming nature of the e-feedback processes, (ii) the occasional need for face-to-face discussions, peer feedback addition, providing supplements to e-feedback such as on-demand e-tutorials, and (iii) increased workload for the teacher in proportion to the number of students. Specific writing improvement was perceived to be locally in the use of punctuation signs and grammar, in spelling skills and the scope of vocabulary; and globally in organising ideas, finding ideas in the form of blueprints, and developing ideas into full-length essays. The student perceptions demonstrated that the learner-centred e-feedback environment created different affordances for students’ cognitive, affective, and metacognitive behaviours: (i) cognitively, it assisted the use and development of various learning strategies, enhanced student EFL writing experience, and increased awareness of error patterns in their essays; (ii) affectively, it supported students’ motivational processes, ability to appraise their progress, restore, and sustain positivity, and greater perceived self-efficacy beliefs in their own L2 writing skills; finally, (iii) metacognitive affordances included the ability to rethink and amend their plans as well as seek out support, ability to reflect on the writing processes holistically, ability to self-monitor to remain on course, and ability to devise and implement a plan of action mostly by finding a strategy to deal with mistakes and by taking greater caution in writing their future drafts. Despite arising from a particular contextual framework with the experience of particular cohorts of students, the findings can hopefully be of value to researchers and practitioners in the fields of online language pedagogy, second language acquisition (SLA), EFL writing, and computer-assisted language learning (CALL) with communication uses. The findings can assist language courseware designers, e-feedback platform developers, and L2 writing course administrators to support and enhance their practices and decisions, especially in providing and implementing ICT and SRL initiatives in EFL writing.

This independent degree project investigates how formative feedback on written assignments affect Swedish upper secondary school pupils’ writing skills regarding form, what the effects are, and if the effects are the same for pupils in different ability bands. This was done by a time series analysis of tests where a collection of texts from pupils in different ability bands (E, C, and A) in two different classes was collected. All errors in the texts were counted and categorised, as well with the teachers’ highlighted errors on the pupils’ texts. The errors were further calculated into number of errors per 100 words due to different lengths of the texts. The results showed that there was a somewhat positive effect of the teachers’ feedback overall, and that pupils in lower ability bands processed feedback more effectively than pupils in higher ability bands. However, the results also suggested that in order to fully draw conclusions such as these, a statistical study is necessary to strengthen the results due to the low numbers in the results. The pedagogical implications found showed that teachers need to work differently with feedback for high-grade pupils. In order to do so, teacher education programs must emphasise this and address to teachers how to do this.