Abstract:
The present study-both qualitative and quantitative--explored fifty EFL learners’ preferences for receiving error feedback on different grammatical units as well as their beliefs about teacher feedback strategies. The study also examined the effect of the students’ level of writing ability on their views about the importance of teacher feedback on different error types. Data was gathered through the administration of a questionnaire، verbal protocol analysis، and students’ writing scores. The results of repeated measures، multivariate analysis of variance، and frequency counts revealed that the majority of the students expect and value teachers’ written feedback on the following surface-level errors: transitional words، sentence structure، verb tenses، adverbs، punctuation، prepositions، and spelling، respectively. The results of think-aloud protocol analysis indicated that students’ beliefs about the importance of feedback on different grammatical units are formed as a result of the teacher’s practice and his emphasis on certain types of feedback and feedback strategies. Finally، the findings of thestudy showed that the L2 learners’ level of writing ability influences their views about the importance of feedback on errors pertinent to particular grammatical units.
Machine summary:
The study also examined the effect of the students’ level of writing ability on their views about the importance of teacher feedback on different error types.
The results of repeated measures, multivariate analysis of variance, and frequency counts revealed that the majority of the students expect and value teachers’ written feedback on the following surface-level errors: transitional words, sentence structure, verb tenses, adverbs, punctuation, prepositions, and spelling, respectively.
A group of researchers consider error correction as harmful, time consuming, and ineffective (Truscott, 2007, 1996, 1999; Semke, 1984; Sheppared, 1992; Kepner, 1991); another group defend the use of error feedback and believe that correcting students’ written errors would help them improve the quality and accuracy of their writing (Rahimi, 2009; Ferris, 1999, 2003, 2004; Lee, 1997, 2004; Hedgcok & Lefkowitz, 1994).
1. 1 Literature review Previous studies on students’ views about error feedback (Ferris, 1995; Hedgcock & Lefkowitz, 1994; Komura, 1999; Leki, 1991; Roberts, 1999) have consistently showed that L2 learners really expect and value teacher feedback on their writing.
It contains seven questions, which inquire about the students’ opinions regarding different types of surface-level error feedback (transitional words, adverbs, punctuation, verb tenses, spelling, and prepositions).
A likely explanation for the difference between the views of the more skilled learners and those of the students at a lower level can be that these three grammatical elements moderately affect communication of ideas or clarity of the message expressed through writing, whereas the errors related to sentence structure or connectors would create more ambiguity or, at times, block communication totally; as a result, the teacher does not attend to the former as often as the latter while giving feedback.