Written corrective feedback: A comparative study of the preferences and beliefs of EFL teachers and learners in Saudi Arabia

Research objectives

English language teachers may supply learners with ineffective content or content that does not meet individual preferences, despite the variety of ways to deliver it. As a result, it is vital to consider EFL learners’ preferences in the teaching and learning process as much as in teachers’ feedback. Accordingly, the main objective of this study is to discover the Saudi EFL learners’ preferences for the type of Corrective Feedback (CF) they would like to receive from their teacher on a written project. Teachers provide different types of CF on students’ compositions (e.g., direct, indirect). This study explores types of CF that Saudi EFL students prefer to receive from their teachers. It also aims to investigate the students’ attitudes and perceptions towards their teachers’ CF in general.

Research questions

The study answers the following questions:

EFL instructors’ practice of corrective feedback

Studies focused on EFL instructors’ perceptions and practices on WCF are many.^6–8,14 The majority of these studies showed that misalignments usually exist between beliefs and practices. Amrhein and Nassaji¹⁴ explored the perceptions of both EFL teachers and learners regarding the kinds and quantity of WCF and found that many contradictions appeared in WCF practices. Mao and Crosthwaite⁶ investigated Chinese teachers’ beliefs and actual practices regarding WCF in students’ essays and found some agreements, and at least three discrepancies: teachers believed they provided indirect feedback to students when they directly gave their feedback. Secondly, teachers said they wrote down their comments on students’ work in the margin; in reality, they did not. Finally, teachers were found to give more importance to local issues while focusing more on global issues. In the Omani context, Trabelsi⁸ explored the alignment and misalignment between instructors’ beliefs and practices and students’ congruent preferences with their instructors’ WCF. The study revealed more misalignment and a few alignments. The mismatches stemmed from explicitness, focus, and redrafting, whereas alignment was reached to correct and identify the mistakes. Furthermore, the study found that the number of alignments between students’ preferences and teachers’ beliefs are more significant than the misalignments. The agreement was reached on the source, amount, and explicitness of feedback. The incongruence was found in the comments and focus of the feedback.

Learners’ beliefs about corrective feedback

Learner participants in this study took part in writing compositions and submitted them to their teachers while investigating their feelings regarding the corrective feedback. Learner’s engagement with CF is characterized by Ellis¹⁵ based on how learners respond to that feedback, which includes cognition, behavior, and emotion. The subsequent research has expanded to include how learners process and respond to WCF.^3–5 Chen et al.⁴ explored Chinese learners’ perceptions and preferences in WCF. The study showed that learners showed neutral opinions regarding explicit grammar instruction; they revealed a positive tendency towards the comments in the margins.

In addition to variations between people, learners’ engagement with WCF is concurrently influenced by learners’ variables and context.^15–17 Similarly, Guerrettaz and Johnston¹² considered learners’ participation in WCF as part of classroom life, reflected in the vast range of learners’ features and contextual factors. A degree of complication occurs due to the interplay of so many elements to enhance learning, which causes negative pressures among learners.

Studies on WCF in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA)

The topic of corrective feedback is saturated in the Saudi context.^7,18,19 Written corrective feedback in an EFL context has been investigated from different dimensions in much previous research.^13,20–24 The investigations include teachers’ beliefs and actual practices and the learners’ preferences. Al-Shahrani and Storch¹³ studied the form of WCF that Saudi instructors provided their learners following the guidelines of institutions, instructors’ beliefs on the most effective feedback, and learners’ preferences. The findings showed that teachers’ beliefs were not consistently enacted in their practices. Their indirect feedback focused on grammar and ignored learners who preferred direct feedback. Similarly, Albogami¹⁸ studied L2 instructors’ and learners’ perspectives on the relevance of written feedback and the components of successfully written feedback at King Saud University. The results showed awareness in both learners and instructors on the importance of written feedback in boosting learning, strengthening confidence, improving autonomous learning, and increasing interaction between learners and instructors in the English writing classroom. Furthermore, Alkhatib⁷ studied teachers’ beliefs and practices and learners’ preferences in the Saudi context. The findings showed that teachers’ beliefs and practices were congruent in the type and quality of feedback. They diverged regarding the source of feedback, the directness and indirectness, and implicitness and explicitness of feedback.

Halim et al. explored EFL learners’ perceptions of remedial feedback.²² They found that learners viewed teachers’ feedback positively as a vital learning tool for their learning path. Alzahrani’s²⁰ study revealed that Saudi instructors ascertain that using unfocused corrective feedback probably develops learners’ abilities to correct their writing errors. Learners felt that receiving coded, unfocused feedback encouraged them to write better, and it was found that this type of feedback was best suited to higher-levels of learning where better standards of improvement are expected.

Rajab²³ found that both instructors and learners showed a high interest in WCF. Learners believed that getting well-structured WCF helped them familiarize themselves with how language works and thus accelerated their language acquisition. Findings showed that congruence was poor between learners’ and instructors’ beliefs: learners were interested in unfocused WCF while instructors preferred coded feedback.

Types of WCF

Nomenclature in WCF has been a subject of much debate and consequent confusion.²⁵ WCF strategies may be classified as direct feedback, coded feedback, uncoded feedback and, marginal feedback. Furthermore, another classification was supplemented by Tedick and Gortari,¹⁰ who identified six types of corrective feedback strategies: Explicit correction, recast, clarification request, metalinguistic cues, elicitation, and repetition. Still, a third classification given by Ellis⁹ mentioned there are three types of feedback strategies: Direct, Indirect, and Metalinguistic. Direct feedback is when the error is marked along with the correction. In Indirect feedback, the error is marked, but correction is not given. Metalinguistic feedback is an explicit type of corrective feedback that poses questions or provides comments or information that enable the learner to spot the error and correct it.

Study design

The current study aimed to examine the types of EFL teachers’ WCF on the written output of learners in EFL classrooms and learners’ beliefs and attitudes towards WCF. The study was qualitatively conducted based on the content analysis of teachers’ comments on students’ writing. Data have been collected in two forms: One, the types of the WCF provided by three EFL teachers in a Saudi university. These data were coded according to the four types of WCF (see Table 1); Two, responses to a questionnaire that examined learners’ preferences and beliefs towards the different types of WCF as tools in language improvement. Therefore, the written output generated for the study was not evaluated for its quality, and focus was diligently kept on the WCF.

Study population

The study was conducted in the Department of English and Translation at Qassim University, Saudi Arabia. The intake class, consisting of 184 students, were informed about the purpose of the research and invited to participate in the study. They enrolled in the first semester and studied Writing 1 Course for 2021-2022. The participants had the same cultural background and had studied English for the same number of years. Their median age was 21 and their native language was Arabic. The researcher told them to provide accurate answers and informed them that all their information would remain anonymous and would only be used for research purposes. They were informed that their data would be published publicly, but anonymously in line with their agreement.

Data collection

From the population of 184 students (the total intake for the session), the researcher identified a convenience sample of 92 first-year EFL learners across three levels/sections in the department of English. It may be noted that EFL learners have some exposure to English literature in their senior school years and this component is integrated into their language curriculum. The Greek drama Antigone is taught to EFL learners both in senior high school and in the first year of English education in the university. Using this background, the researcher organized a viewing of the dramatized version of the play, freely available on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPPE5Wq90MQ). This version carries English subtitles and is slightly more than 150 minutes long. Based on their viewing, the learners were informed beforehand that they would be requested to compose a short character sketch of the central character Creon. The screening was completed in one sitting by requesting adjustments from other teachers. No writing exercise was conducted on the same day. On the following day, writing output samples were collected as data on the teachers’ use of WCF. These samples were collected in one phase to ensure authentic output. Assigning writing tasks to EFL learners is part of the language enrichment activities prescribed in the syllabus. This made the researcher’s task more manageable as the participants did not need to take extra time to complete the writing samples. In all, the study comprised 92 writing samples which were coded anonymously using numbers instead of the students’ names, to ensure teachers’ unbiased feedback. Copies were made of all the 92 samples, and three EFL teachers in two language departments at the university were given a set each to complete WCF in two phases. For this, prior written permission was secured from the Rector, and teachers were assured that the exercise was for research purposes only and would not be used to evaluate them. Corrected copies were requested to be returned at the end of a week to compile any WCF patterns in each phase. The aim behind employing two phases was to ensure that all possible feedback choices formed the dataset.

At the end of phase two, a five-point Likert Scale-based questionnaire on all possible strategy combinations used by the teachers was administered to the participants to identify their preferences in WCF in EFL. The questionnaire aimed to measure students’ perceptions of the WCF and their opinions. The questionnaire comprised 11 close-ended items, as presented in Table 2. These items reflected students’ perceptions of the types of the WCF pertained by their instructors and the focus of their instructors on the elements of language such as vocabulary, grammar, syntax, and discourse. A copy of the questionnaire can be found in the Extended data.²⁸

Data analysis

The researcher produced a rubric of all possible feedback combinations to classify the WCF generated in the two phases of correction. The rubric consisted of five strategies in a column, i.e., direct, metalinguistic, clarification, elicitation, and repetition, and rows consisting of grammar, syntax, vocabulary, and discourse. The researcher checked each of the teachers’ WCF samples and classified them according to the strategy types and language systems for each student’s marked papers. The researcher then carefully parsed each corrected script to identify every instance of WCF and recorded it in the rubric. Finally, all the classified WCF test papers were calculated to get the frequency for each type.

Instrument validity and reliability were established by a panel of five subject experts whose suggestions were incorporated into the questionnaire before pilot testing it with a group of thirty EFL learners not included in the final survey. The questionnaire items were coded as 1 (totally disagree) to 5 (totally agree). SPSS 22 version was used to calculate the findings. Descriptive analysis was conducted including the presenting of percentage.

Ethics and consent

Ethical approval was obtained from the Committee of Research Ethics in the College of Language and Translation, Qassim University (approval number: 30-Eng-2021). Informed verbal consent from all the students who participated in the study was obtained. The researcher explicitly told them that the study aimed to explore the EFL Saudi instructors’ use of WCF while they revise their compositions. The researcher informed them that their anonymized data would be published publicly.

Recommendations

Greater focus on WCF literature could produce interesting findings that account for a more holistic understanding of the phenomena. Information on WCF in more contexts is needed as the majority of studies focus on one context. As mentioned in the literature, WCF may be changed and affected by learning settings; therefore, further research should be undertaken to compare learning environments and the similarities and differences in beliefs and practices and learners’ preferences. Also, more research is required to determine the level of content analysis in teachers’ feedback to make use of them along with grammar and vocabulary alike in the development of learners’ writing abilities.

Limitations

A number of limitations need to be noted regarding the current study. First, this study is restrictive in nature as it sought learners’ attitudes on 11 items without allowing the freedom to express their opinions on types of WCF and their needs. Second, it confirms and digresses from previous findings without setting new dimensions for the process of WCF management or moving forward to set a framework to guide writing teachers to focus not only on the linguistic elements of the learners’ writings but also the discursive elements. Finally, caution must be applied with a small sample size, as the results might not be transferable to similar contexts.

Underlying data

Figshare: Dr. Hani Hamad - Questionnaire.docx. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.19322408.v1.²⁸

This project contains the following underlying data:

Extended data

This project contains the following extended data:

Data are available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC-BY 4.0).