Corrective feedback on writing of second - year English - Majored students: A case study at Da Lat University: Master of TESOL

Abstract

The study searched for the written corrective feedback (WCF) practices of DLU teachers and the attitudes of English-majored students towards WCF. In order to find out which corrective feedback types were used by DLU teachers, 60 samples of students’ writing were collected for analysis. 271 second-year English-majored students from the Faculty of Foreign Languages participated in the study. In order to collect data from the students, questionnaires and semi-structured interviews were applied. The study illustrated that a combination of WCF types was applied by the teachers at DLU including direct WCF, indirect WCF and metalinguistic WCF. Among the three types of WCF, indirect WCF was used most frequently. Besides, the study found that teachers at DLU applied unfocused written corrective feedback when dealing with students’ errors. In terms of the attitudes of DLU students towards WCF, the study is based on Wenden's (1991) framework. Three components of attitude involving cognitive, affective, behavior components were investigated. To be more specific, the study looked for students’ thinking about the importance of WCF, students’ feeling about WCF and students’ reactions when receiving WCF. With the aim of improving the effectiveness of WCF in teaching, some implications for teachers and stakeholders were also included in the study