Responding to Student's Writing: EFL Students' Reactions to Teacher's Written/Oral Responses in One-Draft Only Composition Classrooms

For the past several decades, research on L۱ and L۲ composition has emphasized the importance of the role of composition teachers in providing feedback on students' writings. This article reports on the use of providing different modes of feedback-written/oral-by the teacher and their impacts on Iranian EFL students' writing performances. Sixty Iranian university students-۱۰ males and ۵۰ females, aged between ۲۲ and ۲۵ majoring in English Translation-were assigned to three homogeneous groups based on their scores on the Oxford Placement Test (OPT) and a sample paragraph on a given topic, emphasizing the expository genre by providing some reasons. They covered five topics in a sequence of ten written texts-before and after receiving feedback-over a ۱۵-week period. Then, the researchers scored the papers analytically. The results revealed that: first; feedback had a significant effect on students' revising their first drafts and second, the students benefited from the two types of teacher-provided feedbacks almost equally. The findings also confirmed student- teacher conferences as an effective means of providing comments on students' writings, which in turn, could be employed to improve interaction and socialization among students and contribute to enhanced attitudes towards learning and working with others especially in EFL settings.  

Keywords:

feedback , Oral-feedback , Teacher- feedback , Writing skill , Written-feedback