Providing effective written feedback to ESL students poses a challenging yet crucial task for language teachers. While numerous studies have delved into critical feedback, few have explored students' perceptions of praise in written feedback. To gauge students’ view of praise, we analyzed responses to two types: person praise (e.g., "You are a good writer") and performance praise (e.g., "You used the past tense correctly"). Language proficiency levels (high and low) and cultural backgrounds (Asian and Romance) were also considered. ESL students ( n = 100) were given feedback on an essay they wrote and surveyed about praise comments. In addition, three focus groups were conducted. Quantitative data indicated a preference for both praise types, while focus groups revealed a preference for performance over person praise. Lower proficiency students valued and considered praise to be more change-invoking than high-proficiency peers. Additionally, students from Romance cultures favored praise more than Asian cultures. Interaction effects highlighted nuances, such as high-proficiency Asian students perceiving praise as less kind, valuable, positive, and clear than their Romance counterparts. These findings offer insights for teachers and administrators to develop an informed praise philosophy and recognize which praise type best meets their students’ needs.

Significant research has been conducted in the past several decades on best practices in providing feedback to students’ writing. Over the past two decades, feedback methods have evolved as writing classes have transitioned from face-to-face traditional classrooms to online classrooms and as technology has advanced. Written feedback has moved from handwritten notes in the margins of a paper to typed feedback using commenting tools. Audio feedback has gone from the cassette tape to the MP3 file. One of the most recent trends in feedback to students’ writing is in video form using screencasting technology. Video feedback through screencasting is especially beneficial in the technical writing classroom, where students often need to see the problems in their document. Students often benefit from seeing why they need more white space, why their graphics are not clear, why their alignment is off, why their instructions are not precise for their audience, why their numbered steps are not developed correctly, and why a host of other design principles could be improved. Moreover, video feedback through screencasting technology is becoming more popular in the workplace. Exposing students in technical writing classes to screencasting feedback has the potential not only to improve their writing but also to enhance their readiness for the workplace.

This reflection focuses on teaching writing online for the first-year students in the Academic English course at the Westminster International University in Tashkent (WIUT), Uzbekistan. Academic English is a core course for all incoming first-year students and aims to develop students’ proficiency in listening, reading, and writing skills. A great emphasis is placed on the development of writing skills, and students are required to write at least four summaries, two essays, and one reflection during the twelve weeks of the first semester. A new challenging component in the autumn 2020 semester was teaching writing online, due to the lockdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The classroom writing processes were examined through the lens of the Self- and Socially-Regulated Multilingual Writing model (Akhmedjanova, 2020), which revealed prevalence of socially-regulated rather than self-regulated writing practices. Also, teachers instructed students to use revision strategies more than planning and formulating writing strategies. A cursory examination of students’ reflections suggested that many students struggled with the environment and time management skills. Future revisions to the Academic English course should include explicit teaching of planning and formulating writing strategies along with planning and time management skills.

Providing comments on student writing is one of the most important, difficult, and time-consuming activities instructors undertake. Many studies have examined written feedback, and much research has shown the problems associated with this form, ranging from time spent providing thoughtful feedback to students’ confusion about the commentary. Some instructors have used audio commentary to address these issues. Audio commentary has been researched for years; the results have indicated that students prefer audio commentary, and it is perceived as more personal and positive by instructors and students. To date, little research has looked closely at audio commentary to understand if or how it might differ from written in form and function. This research uses as multicase approach and genre analysis to examine the organisational moves and discourse analysis uncover why audio commentary is perceived differently by both producers and consumers of this genre. Results show that audio commentary does not differ in form or function from its written counterpart, but metadiscursive features may play a role in how the genre is perceived by both instructors and students, providing real evidence of how audio commentary is different from written.

Drawing upon cognitive writing process theory and research, this study investigates the influence of language of writing, foreign language (FL) proficiency and gender on the revision processes of 77 undergraduate students studying at an English-medium college in Oman. Their first language (L1) was Arabic and their FL was English. The participants produced two argumentative authentic texts, one in L1 and one in FL. Their proficiency in English was assessed using the Oxford Placement Test (OPT). Participants’ revisions were recorded and analysed, according to the measures amount, location and type, via keystroke logging. The results showed that the vast majority of revisions in both languages were immediate, i.e. at the point of inscription, and focused on language rather than content. In addition, there was consistent evidence that participants made more revisions in the FL than they did in L1. For ‘total amount of revision’ and ‘immediate revisions’, there was a consistent interaction between gender and FL proficiency. The pattern of the interaction indicated two conflicting tendencies: (a) female participants appeared in general to be more motivated to make revisions in both languages than males, and (b) the less proficient they were in FL the more revisions they made. By contrast, the number of revisions made by the male participants did not depend on their FL proficiency. For ‘distant’, i.e. already written text, and ‘end’, i.e. after producing the first draft, revisions the amount of revision depended solely on the language of writing and gender. Furthermore, the results revealed that when writing in the FL, students with greater FL proficiency attended to content revision more than language revision. Findings are discussed in light of process-oriented writing research and implications for writing research and teaching are suggested.

This article identifies how a cohort of preservice teachers educated during the No Child Left Behind Era thought about the teaching of writing when they entered a secondary English Language Arts (ELA) teacher preparation program. Most participants shared the beliefs that: (1) writing was primarily the demonstration of specific skills, often on a standardized test; (2) alternatives to the five-paragraph essay would be extra, with formulaic writing central to instruction; (3) teachers had little role in student writing development beyond assigning writing; (4) feedback on writing should be ‘objective’ and tied to a grade; and (5) the purpose of ELA is primarily to teach literature. Authors believe identifying preservice teachers’ beliefs about writing and the role of the writing teacher at the beginning of a program can help teacher educators design experiences to expand students’ notions of literacy and of writing instruction.

In response to current trends in Composition as well as the challenges of langauging and pedagogy in the global reality, this qualitative classroom-based action research study was designed to gain a better understanding of strategies, practices, and competences exhibited by students of various linguistic and cultural backgrounds when composing, reading, and responding to the narratives of their peers in a multi- lingual composition class. In a focused presentation of a single student case study, the manuscript conceptualizes ‘effective’ writing in global contexts, outlines successful strategies to gain the ‘buy-in’ from culturally and linguistically diverse audiences when composing transnationally and translingually. The study concludes by suggesting ways and strategies to transform ‘traditional’ peer response assignments to engage global rhetorics and transnational frameworks for the sake of all students and their success communicating across languages, rhetorics, borders, and modes.

Affect is an important predictor of writers’ performance. Though writing affect has been researched since the mid-1970s, few works have addressed the ways to motivate students to write and/or help them avoid demotivation. This paper suggests some guidelines that teachers can follow to help L2 students overcome negative writing affect. After briefly highlighting the aspects of negative writing affect and describing its causes, the paper provides five main guidelines for helping demotivated L2 students to write. These guidelines are: improving students’ linguistic knowledge, integrating technological tools in writing instruction, nurturing students’ positive beliefs about writing, optimizing teacher feedback, and orchestrating peer assessment activities. The first two pedagogical guidelines are concerned with fostering students’ positive writing affect indirectly through enabling them to overcome their composing problems and write in a supportive environment, whereas the last three focus on enhancing it directly by nurturing their positive beliefs about and attitudes towards writing. Each guideline is rationalized and described in detail.

Interactive Writing (IW) is a powerful support for language and literacy development; however, its emphasis on using oral language to construct written language can present challenges for deaf/Deaf and hard of hearing (d/Dhh) students due to their unique and diverse language experiences. Teachers (n = 14) using Strategic and Interactive Writing Instruction (SIWI) with grade 3–5 d/Dhh students in a variety of settings were observed using a space referred to as ‘the language zone’ to address the unique language and literacy needs of d/Dhh students.  The language zone is the designated space in a classroom where the creation, translation and revision of ideas is made visible.  Researchers developed a flowchart with three tiers to document the three purposes for which the teachers use the space.  Accompanying scenarios provide concrete examples of three distinct ways in which the language zone can be used.  Teachers can use this language zone flow chart as a tool to recognize, analyze and select instructional moves that have the potential to positively impact the language and literacy proficiencies of d/Dhh students.           Acknowledgments: The research reported here was supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Grant R324A120085 to the University of Tennessee. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the Institute or the U.S. Department of Education.

At the comprehensive research university described in this study, some students taking a required, first-semester, composition course in the fall make great progress in their ability to draft and revise the curriculum’s major essays. Yet, they still fail the class. Many of these students are on their way to becoming practiced writers but require additional assistance to move beyond a definition of revision consisting solely of editing and proofreading strategies. To support such students, I created a voluntary, spring-semester, Composition I course foregrounding both lower- and higher-order revision practices in which students could continue to work on previous assignment drafts from fall. In a three-year, mixed methods, case study involving an experimental course-design model, students enrolling in a Composition I class focused on revision strategies demonstrated both positive revision-related drafting and course outcomes, according to findings. This article includes a description of the course’s framework and its assessment practices. The results of this study have implications for teaching revision in first-year composition.

This exploratory case study investigated an experienced second language writing instructor's written feedback practice in an ESL freshman composition class. The purpose of the research was to explore and examine contextual factors and their impact on instructor written feedback practices in order to provide situated descriptions of relationships between written feedback practices and contextual factors. Data were collected from one experienced ESL writing instructor and one ESL writer in a variety of forms: surveys, interviews, a stimulated-recall task, classroom and instructor-student conference observations, instructional materials, and student written product. The study found that the instructor's decision-making in selecting specific feedback forms was guided by a number of written feedback practice principals in conjunction with other contextual factors such as the instructorperceived level of students' writing proficiency, the availability of writing conference, the nature of writing issues, students' writing performance in the previous writing assignments, lesson history, and knowledge about effective feedback practice. The study suggests L2 writing instructors' written feedback decisions are the product of different combinations of multiple-contextual factors and the nature of the written feedback practice principles is a task-specific manifestation of teacher cognition specifically configured for written feedback practice.

This qualitative study investigates peer feedback among adolescent English and Spanish learners writing together in an extracurricular bilingual literacy program. Data sources include audio recordings, writing revision history on Google documents and interviews. This study reveals the complexity of peer interaction, feedback processes, and the potential for mutual growth. Oriented by Speech Act Theory (Austin, 1962; Searle, 1969) and informed by the concept of languaging (Mercer, 2004; Swain, 2006), this study conceptualizes peer feedback as acts that students take to mediate the thinking, writing, and communication processes while working together on a language autobiography. Findings show that students strategically used dynamic feedback acts mediating the writing and revising process, such as 'Ask questions', 'Give information', 'Make corrections'. We also found the use of translanguaging in the feedback acts expanded opportunities for learning as linguistically diverse peers were engaged in metalinguistic discussions, text co-construction, and language experiments. This study contributes to a new understanding of peer feedback which leverages the cultural and linguistic resources students bring to school.

Collaborative writing is one of the twenty-first century writing competencies critical for college and career success. Technology-enhanced writing platforms, such as Google Docs, can serve as effective media for written collaboration. Although cloudbased tools such as Google Docs are increasingly used in secondary schools, little is known about how students collaboratively write in these environments, including how feedback sources and types of tasks affect collaborative writing patterns. This study examined the content of feedback and revision in 424 Google Docs written by 145 sixth grade students to understand the variations in feedback and revision patterns across key contextual factors: the source of feedback (i.e., teacher vs. peer) and assigned task type (i.e., argumentative, narrative, report). We conducted a qualitative content analysis of feedback and revision, followed by Chi-square and ANCOVA analyses. With regards to variations across feedback sources, we found that teacher feedback addressed more macro-level features (e.g., content, organization) whereas student feedback focused more on micro-level features (e.g., mechanics, conventions), and neither teacher nor peer feedback led to subsequent revisions. With regards to variations across task types, we found that among the three writing genres, the narrative genre had the greatest number of coauthors and feedback activities, and most of these activities consisted of affective feedback or direct edits. In contrast, in the report genre, the feedback activities tended to focus on content and organization, and the language functions of both feedback (e.g., advice, explanation) and revision (e.g., acknowledging, clarifying) were most evident in the report genre. We discuss the implications of these findings for the design and implementation of technology-based collaborative writing tasks in academic settings, as well as the limitations and directions for future studies.

A number of studies have used interviews to find out L2 learners’ perceptions of different feedback practices. Usually, learners who have been interviewed have experienced a number of different feedback practices. The purpose of the present study is to investigate learner revision practices and perceptions of peer and teacher feedback after having received feedback from only one source. In this study, learners received either teacher feedback alone or only peer feedback for one year. Twelve students were then interviewed to investigate their revision practices and perceptions of both peer and teacher feedback. The narrative analysis of the interview data showed that participants were very concerned about ‘correcting’ their drafts. Students in both groups had similar levels of comprehension of feedback; however, those in the peer feedback group were more forthcoming about asking their peers when they did not understand. Students in the teacher feedback group felt that they did not have enough time between drafts for the revisions they wanted to make. It was also found that students in the peer feedback group seemed to benefit more from reading their peers’ writing than from receiving peer feedback.

To investigate a diverse sample of adolescent writers’ experiences with disciplinary writing, this study compared 66 adolescents’ perceptions of writing through an analysis of interviews as part of a national study. Grounded in a social constructivist framework that stresses the role of agency in the development of writing competence, the study aims to examine factors – including language background and prior writing experiences – that are associated with adolescents’ perceptions of their writing development. The study asked: How do L1 and L2 adolescents’ perceptions of writing development compare? To what extent, if at all, is agency implicated in patterns of variation? Results of the comparative analysis suggest that varying affordances and constraints, and combinations of these, relate to adolescents’ expressed agency toward writing. Affordances include opportunities to select personally relevant subjects and to develop writing through feedback and revision processes; constraints include the use of highly structured writing scaffolds, formulas, and tightly constrained topics. Implications for differentiated scaffolding of writing instruction that might affectively and cognitively engage diverse adolescent learners are discussed.

This paper, building on results from a large online embedded language and literacy development project, introduces the notions of ‘cohesion’ and ‘coherence’ in feedback and outlines steps that instructors can take to provide such feedback in their own contexts. Cohesion in feedback can be defined in terms of its goals, audience, and organisation; and coherence in terms of how instances of feedback work together to scaffold a student into developing a deeper understanding of issues in their writing. The paper argues that feedback which is cohesive and coherent is not a collection of reactions to student’s errors/mistakes, but it is a thoughtfully and carefully drafted text which responds to a student’s writing based on an assessment of their needs. The paper includes an evaluation of how students respond to such feedback by sharing examples of students’ drafts, the feedback they received, and their responses to the feedback. This paper helps us in understanding the nature of feedback as well as understanding how to apply it with the goal of making our students stronger, more independent, and self-regulating writers.

Although many second language writing classes use a process approach, anecdotal evidence suggests that assessment of writing in such classes often still focuses on the written product alone. This assessment practice continues despite specialists having recommended that both process and product be assessed. This study compares second-year university students in Japan who were assessed on feedback processes and product with others assessed on product alone in terms of perceptions of the feedback received. Perceptions were determined through a post-treatment questionnaire. Neither the assessment of the use of teacher feedback in revisions nor the assessment of the quality and quantity of peer feedback was found to have a clear benefit in terms of students’ perceptions of the feedback received. This finding suggests the need for further research to confirm whether the assessment of both process and product is worth the considerable time investment required.

This quasi-experimental study examined the efficacy of the three types of written corrective feedback (WCF), namely, direct, indirect and coded WCF, and the no-correction approach. A diary study on student responses to WCF was also conducted. The one-semester investigation involved 68 Thai students in an undergraduate English course. Results showed that the three WCF types had significantly better revision effects than the no-correction approach, but only the coded WCF produced significant delayed effect. However, analyses of diary entries suggested no general accuracy improvement in any group. Diary study results indicated that, although all groups reported awareness of similar actions, and positive attitudes towards WCF, the coded WCF group seemed more aware of the WCF than the other groups. Findings suggest that focused coded WCF helps in learning English as an L2, although its role in L2 acquisition remains to be seen.

Providing English language learners with effective feedback on their writing is an issue facing many writing teachers. This article focuses on English language learners’ perceptions of both direct and indirect form-focused written feedback and how these perceptions might change over time. Forty-two advanced level students in an intensive English program at a large U.S. university participated in two surveys, one at the beginning of the term and one at the end. They were asked to rate and comment on the usefulness of five types of feedback (three indirect and two direct) for the purposes of both text revision and the learning of grammar and writing. Students perceived the feedback types that provide codes, comments, and/or explanations as being more useful overall in text revision than other forms of feedback. Findings indicate that students’ perceptions regarding the usefulness of feedback types changed throughout the course. Three areas of feedback that students focused on as their perceptions change are identified, as are reasons why students did or did not value each of the feedback types.

This study examined the impact of different forms of feedback on the writing of a group of 82 adolescent students in secondary English classes. During a 6-week intervention, students were randomly assigned to one of three feedback groups: peer feedback on pen-and-paper drafts, teacher feedback delivered electronically through a course management system, and automated feedback generated through computer-based writing evaluation software. Pre- and post-measures of student writing quality, length, and correctness were analyzed, and survey data explored student perceptions of their experiences. Findings indicate that all students, regardless of which form of feedback they received, wrote longer essays and scored higher on holistic ratings at post test than they did at pretest. Neither language status nor group assignment had a greater or lesser impact on performance on length or holistic quality. However, differences between feedback groups spiked on the proximal measure that examined mastery of particular aspects of the genre being taught. Both peer feedback and teacher feedback delivered electronically had a statistically significant impact on student performance in the genre of open-ended response. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of these findings for future research and instruction in the secondary context.

This article traces the development of feedback from comments on product alone to the interactive process-oriented approaches that are currently the state of the art. A range of variables that impact how feedback is given and received are considered. Attention is also paid to feedback givers, their beliefs, philosophies, and practices along with a critical view of language varieties and the roles they play in teachers’ evaluation of writing. Finally, the evolution of written feedback to incorporate the development of online technologies brings us to the present time and an exploration of their use and efficacy.

The current study reports on the “rhetoric revision log,” which was developed to help second language writing students track their progress in improving rhetoric-related issues in their writing (such as organization and topic development). Sixty-six English as a second language (ESL) students were divided into one control and two treatment groups. Students in the two treatment groups used the rhetoric revision log to keep a record of teacher written feedback in several rhetoric-related areas throughout the course of one semester. The two treatment groups differed in that in one the students used only the log (log-only), while in the other (log + conference) students also participated in structured writing conferences in which the teacher discussed the rhetoric revision log with the students. Results revealed that both treatment groups improved more in their overall writing ability than the control group. Moreover, students in the log + conference group were more likely than the other two groups to improve in rhetoric-related writing features over the course of the semester. These findings suggest that using the rhetoric revision log helped students improve not only rhetoric-related aspects of their writing, but also their overall writing ability.

Much of the research on teacher response to student writing has focused on how teachers can best help their students improve their writing and, concomitantly, on the reactions teachers’ responses evoke in their students. What is largely absent as an object of study in this research is the teacher’s experience of the responding process and the effects which alternative methods of response have on the teacher’s role in the classroom. This article describes my attempts as a writing teacher to separate grading student writing from responding to student writing. Based on my observations during a modest pilot study, I suggest that the act of grading lies at the heart of the negative reactions teachers have when they respond to student writing and that eliminating grading has positive effects on the teacher’s response process, on classroom instruction, and on how teachers conceptualize their classroom role.

Although response to student writing often consumes the majority of a writing instructor’s time and energy, studies of teachers’ philosophies and practices with regard to feedback have been relatively rare in the response literature. In the study described in this article, college writing instructors from six community colleges and two four-year universities in Northern California (N=129) were surveyed, and volunteers from this group (N=23) gave follow-up in-depth interviews. In addition, each interview participant provided 3-5 samples of student texts with their own written commentary. Based on the findings, our analysis focuses on two questions: 1. How do the participants (college-level writing instructors in Northern California) perceive response to student writing? 2. In what ways might the participants’ own practices be causing or adding to their frustrations? We found that although most of the participants value response and believe it is very important, they are often frustrated and dissatisfied with the task itself and with its apparent lack of impact on student progress. Our data analyses suggest some possible underlying explanations for these teachers’ complex attitudes toward response. The discussion concludes with suggestions of ways writing instructors can adapt or focus their response practices to increase the efficiency and quality of their feedback, to reduce frustration, and to increase satisfaction with this aspect of their teaching practice.

This article describes an approach to writing instruction that involves a combination of the genre approach and the process writing approach. The stages of the writing process that students often do not take time for, namely brainstorming, organizing ideas and drafting, are done as much as possible in the classroom. In preparation for this, students are introduced to models of the type of texts they will have to write, so that they can become familiar with the features that are typical of that text type (genre). These features form the basis of a checklist that will serve as a form for teacher feedback, which is given to the students at various stages of the writing process up to final revision. In addition, certain points are focused on in peer feedback. Throughout the entire process, students are encouraged to become aware of their progress through written reflection. We have found that such an approach, overseen and monitored by the teacher, leads students to writing more focused texts that conform to the genres to which they belong. For the purposes of this article, the text type of argumentative (opinion) essay was used as an example.

This study focuses on how teachers enrolled in a graduate level, online English Education course perceived formulaic or thesis-driven student writing, commonly associated with the traditional “five-paragraph essay.” One goal of this course, “Writing, Reading, and Teaching Creative Nonfiction,” was to engage teachers in reflecting about the uses of this “new” genre in their own classrooms. Living in several states, the participants included one science teacher, four Special Education teachers, and ten middle and secondary Language Arts teachers. We analyzed 12 separate prompts posted to the discussion board over a six-week period. Also, participants were required to post one “thread” into each discussion board, with follow-up comments to threads from at least two other participants. Approximately 75 out of a total of 800 coded comments dealt with formulaic writing. The following patterns of participants’ perceptions emerged from these comments: (1) student benefits of formulaic writing; (2) a hierarchical sequence for teaching writing; (3) obligations to teach formulaic writing; (4) resistance to formulaic writing; (5) the constraints of formulaic writing on students; and (6) the constraints of formulaic writing on teachers. Based on this study, we recommend that teachers engage in writing themselves which includes risk taking, modeling writing and significant revision for their students, and sharing models of writing; ensure that their students write in many forms and genres, including, but not limited to, the five-paragraph essay; develop realistic views of the expectations and obligations they face daily; and internalize effective writing practices. In the process of exploring the genre of creative nonfiction, teachers also had to grapple with old debates, as almost all of this study’s participants changed their views, discovering that the chains they had felt actually were not as tight as they had originally believed.

First person pronoun use in academic writing has received much attention from researchers over the past decade (Baynham (1999), Tang and John (1999), Kuo (1999), Ivanic and Camps (2001), Hyland (2001; 2002; 2004), Harwood (2005) and Koutsantoni (2003, 2007), to name a few). It is acknowledged as the most visible representation of the writer’s identity in the text. This paper investigates the influence of revision on the use of first person pronouns in dissertation writing. The aim of the paper is to reach a better understanding of how writers’ identities develop in academic texts during the process of writing. Master’s level dissertations written by international students mainly from the Far East and enrolled at a UK university form the data for this study. The results reveal that the revision process can be used as an effective means to raise students’ awareness of how their identities develop during the writing process and how they might transform from being novices of the academic discourse community to becoming initiates (Thompson, 2001).

The teaching and learning of writing was examined in ten diverse K-12 schools in which all of the students in one or more classrooms had individual access to laptop computers. Substantial positive changes were observed in each stage of the writing process, including better access to information sources for planning and pre-writing; easier drafting of papers, especially for students with physical or cognitive disabilities that made handwriting laborious; more access to feedback, both from teachers, who could read printed papers much more quickly than handwritten ones, and, in some schools, by automated writing evaluation programs; more frequent and extensive revision; and greater opportunities to publish final papers or otherwise disseminate them to real audiences.

Most writing teachers make use of pens/pencils or computers as a tool to provide their students with written feedback. This article recommends a range of feedback modes for writing teachers, including (1) pen-and-paper, (2) insert comment/track change (giving comments by deleting and adding), and (3) insert audio (recording your voice). Advantages and disadvantages of each feedback mode, based on teacher’s observation as well as students’ preferences, are discussed to help writing teachers consider how different commenting modes might facilitate their feedback process.