Investigating the Practice of Providing Written Corrective Feedback Types by ESL Teachers at the Upper Secondary Level in High Performance Schools

Abstract

The past few decades has seen the rapid development of WCF (written corrective feedback) study. The present study examined the practice of providing WCF by teachers. The aim of this study was to determine the types of WCF used by English teachers. The study is an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design using open-ended and closeended survey questionnaire, interviews, and content analysis of students’ essays. It involved 54 English teachers of high performance schools in a state in West Malaysia to answer the questionnaire, 8 teachers were interviewed and 48 students’ essay scripts were analysed. WCF types studied were by Ellis (2008), namely; Direct, Indirect, Metalinguistic, Focused, Unfocused, Electronic and Reformulation, with two additional types, Personal comment and No feedback. Direct and Metalinguistic comment were the perceived WCF types from the questionnaire findings; however, both teacher interviews and sample essays analysis indicated teachers practised Unfocused and Indirect types the most. The two salient findings to emerge from the data comparison are the teachers were unaware of the available WCF types to provide in the teaching of ESL writing; and teachers’ marking is very much influenced by the LPM (Lembaga Peperiksaan Malaysia) types or marking symbols, which appears to be the only reference teachers have in providing WCF. These findings suggest that teachers need to be given sufficient exposure to all the available WCF types so that more effective WCF practices will take place.