Native and Non-native English-Speaking EFL Teachers' Written Feedback on Chinese EFL Learners' Writing PDF Download

Author: Xiaolong Cheng
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Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Although the last few decades have witnessed studies on teacher written feedback flourishing in the realm of L2 writing, some issues in this field remain under researched: Teachers' theorizations and implementations of written feedback in their specific instructional settings, the effects of teacher written feedback on other dimensions of writing in addition to writing accuracy, and students as the insiders' perceptions on the effects of teacher written feedback. In order to fill such important lacunas, this study used a mixed-methods approach to investigate native and non- native English-speaking (NES and NNES) teachers' written feedback beliefs, practices, and their belief-practice relationships in the Chinese tertiary English-as-a-foreignlanguage (EFL) writing context as well as the effects of their written feedback on Chinese EFL learners' writing performance and perspectives. Phase one study was a case study, aiming to explore how NES and NNES EFL teachers conceptualized and actualized written feedback in the Chinese EFL writing classrooms. Four NES and NNES teachers were recruited through a purposive sampling technique. In this phase, data were collected from multiple research instruments: Semi-structured individual interviews, students' writing samples with teacher written feedback, stimulated recall interviews, and documents. Findings showed that both NES and NNES teachers espoused a set of beliefs regarding five themes regarding written feedback: Purpose, scope, focus, strategy, and orientation. Feedback analyses revealed that these two groups of EFL teachers shared the similar practices in terms of scope, strategy, and orientation, while their actual practices differed significantly in feedback focus. Specifically, NES teachers showed more concern with global issues of writing (i.e., content and organization), whereas their local NNES peers put more emphasis on local issues (i.e., language). The relationships between their beliefs and practices were highly complicated: Consistencies and inconsistencies coexisted. A range of factors related to teachers, students, and context appeared to result in the belief-practice mismatches. The phase two study employed a quasi-experimental design to examine the effects of NES and NNES teachers' written feedback. Using global feedback and written corrective feedback as the alternative independent variables, the study found that NES teachers' written feedback helped Chinese EFL learners improve their performance in syntactic complexity, fluency, content, organization, and overall writing quality. NNES teachers' written feedback benefited students' performance in accuracy, fluency, and overall writing quality. Students' perceptions of the effects elicited from a post-treatment questionnaire were generally in line with and provided detailed information to the quantitative results. This study concludes with a discussion of the contributions and implications regarding theory, methodology, and pedagogy. Theoretically, this study extends the current body of literature in the sphere of teacher written feedback and teacher beliefs. Methodologically, this study combines both quantitative and qualitative data to address the effects of teacher written feedback. Such a design can achieve data triangulation and enhance the reliability of research results. Pedagogically, NES and NNES L2 writing teachers as well as Chinese high education institutions can draw upon the research findings to maximize the scaffolding role of teacher written feedback in L2 writing.