Teacher Practices in Giving Response to ESL Student Writing: A Case Study

Abstract

Teacher feedback to ESL student writing is important to ensure that the students could correct their writing and in the long run, improve their writing ability. This research was carried out to study teachers’ practices in giving feedback to ESL student writing. This study was carried out on 15 English instructors of a private educational institution. The mixed-method approach was used involving the use of both quantitative (questionnaire) and qualitative (interview) tools. The questionnaire and interview questions were adapted from the ones used by Ferris (2014). The results show that the teachers used three main ways of providing feedback (peer review, teacher student conferencing and written comments) to varying degrees. They felt that peer review is difficult to implement. Although some used it, they admitted that they did not really train the students how to review their friends’ writing. This is not in line with the best practices of using peer review. Many teachers felt that teacher-student conference is the best approach to use, although time-consuming. As to written comments, teachers used a variety of ways of writing their feedback and do not generally use a rubric or checklist as suggested by experts. The findings revealed that there need to be improvements in the use of the three main ways of providing feedback.