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The International Journal of Educational and Psychological Assessment

January 2011, Vol. 6(2)

Teachers Feedback Practices in Second Language Academic Writing Classrooms

Carlo Magno
De La Salle University, Manila

Arceli M. Amarles
Philippine Normal University, Manila

Abstract

This study provides support for the hypothesized factors of feedback practices
(feedback on form, content, and writing style) employed by writing teachers in second
language academic writing classes. Participants were 380 college students in a university
in the Philippines who were enrolled in English academic writing classes. A 30-item
questionnaire containing teachers feedback practices were administered among
students. Using Confirmatory Factor Analysis, the three categories of feedback
2
employed by writing teachers in academic writing classes were supported ( =1409.49,
df=402, /df=3.5, RMR=.05, GFI=.96, CFA=.92, RMSEA=.08). Results further
2

showed convergence of the three factors. The actual measure of feedback attained
precision where the TIF curve covers 95% of the distribution. Pedagogical implications
on the use and types of feedbacks employed in the language classrooms were
discussed in this paper.

Keywords: feedback practices in writing, feedback on form, content, writing style,

assessment of writing

Feedback plays a central role in developing writing proficiency among

second language learners. This is especially true for academic writing in the
Philippine setting since the goal of writing instruction in this course is to teach both
the conventions of writing in a particular academic context as well as the
grammatical forms needed to perform writing tasks. In this regard, Filipino students
strive hard to meet the writing demands of the course and the preferences of their
writing teachers.
Feedback as viewed by Furnborough and Truman (2009) entails the
existence of gaps between what has been learned and the target competence of the
learners, and the efforts undertaken to bridge these gaps. This feedback is provided
to ask for further information, to give directions, suggestions, or requests for
revision, to give students new information that will help them revise, and to give
positive feedback about what the students have done well (Ferris, 1997). Feedback
also comes in various linguistic forms, may be in questions, statements, imperatives,
or exclamations, and comments can be softened through the use of a variety of
hedging devices (Ferris, 1997). Since teacher responses to student writing are
expected to help students develop their ideas fully and present them effectively,
feedback needs to cover all aspects of students written texts, including issues of
content, organization, style, grammar, and mechanics (Cohen & Cavalcanti, 1990;
Ferris, 1997; Hedgcock & Leftkowitz, 1994).

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Forms of Feedback in Writing

Ferris, Pezone, Tade, and Tinti (1997) found significant variation in the
teachers commentary across different essay assignments given to students with
different proficiency levels. They conclude that teachers feedback goes beyond
whether a teacher responds to content or form, instead the substance and form
of teacher responses vary significantly depending upon the genre of writing being
considered and the abilities and personality of individual students.
Cohen and Cavalcanti (1990) pose that teachers and students need to work
more on establishing agreement between their separate agenda for feedback and on
expanding the repertoire of strategies learners need to employ for maximum
benefit from the feedback provided. Fathman and Whalley (1990) further reiterate
that revision in and of itself has a positive effect on the quality and accuracy of the
students written output. Findings of these studies offer help to writing teachers in
making informed choices in providing feedback to learners.
Treglias study (2009) posits that students understood and were able to address
corrections whether feedback is indirect/hedged or direct, assuring writing teachers
that mitigating their comments will not affect the clarity of its intent. In a similar
study, Treglia (2008, p. 39) claims that mitigation serves as a face-saving technique
and a tool to motivate and engage students actively in the revision process. Findings
dispute earlier studies of Hyland and Hyland (2001) which recognize the role of
mitigation as a source of misunderstanding between L2 learners and their writing
teachers, and that the students responding favorably to mitigation show proof of the
students advanced English-language proficiency and their awareness of the use of
mitigation as a form of politeness (Ferris, 1997).
Lee (2009) reveals a number of mismatches between teachers beliefs and
practice in written feedback, namely, (1) teachers pay most attention to language
form but they believe theres more to good writing than accuracy, (2) teachers mark
errors comprehensively although selective marking is preferred, (3) teachers tend
to correct and locate errors for students but believe that through teacher feedback
students learn to correct and locate their own errors, (4) teachers use error codes
although they think students have a limited ability to decipher the codes, (5)
teachers award scores/grades to student writing although they are almost certain that
marks/grades draw student attention away from teacher feedback, (6) teachers
respond mainly to weakness in student writing although they know that feedback
should cover both strengths and weaknesses, (7) teachers written feedback practice
allows students little room to take control although teachers think students learn to
take greater responsibility for learning, (8) teachers ask students to do one-shot
writing although they think process writing is beneficial, (9) teachers continue to
focus on student written errors although they know that mistakes will recur, and
(10) teachers continue to mark student writing in the ways they do although they
think their effort does not pay off. In an earlier investigation made by Lee (2004),
results show that teachers and students preferred comprehensive error feedback,
and that the students were reliant on teachers in error correction.

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Benefits of Feedback

Bitchener, Young, and Camerons (2005, p. 313) investigation reveals that

direct oral feedback in combination with direct written feedback did not only have a
greater effect than direct written feedback alone on improved accuracy over time,
but it also found that the combined feedback option facilitated improvement in the
more treatable rule-governed features (past simple tense and definite article) than
in the less treatable feature (prepositions). Moreover, they believe that upper
intermediate L2 writers can improve the accuracy of their use of rule-governed
linguistic features if they are regularly exposed to oral and written corrective
feedback.
Bitchener and Knochs (2008) query on the extent to which different written
corrective feedback options (direct corrective feedback, written and oral meta-
linguistic explanation; direct corrective feedback and written meta-linguistic
explanation; direct corrective feedback only; no corrective feedback) improve
students accuracy in the use of two functional uses of the English article system.
The study shows that (1) students who received all three written corrective feedback
options outperformed those who did not receive written feedback, (2) students
level of accuracy was retained over seven weeks, and (3) there was no difference in
the extent to which migrant and international students improved the accuracy of
their writing as a result of written corrective feedback.

The Present Study

Related literature and studies posed that teachers feedback practices are
not just dictated by the perceived difficulties or needs of the students in their writing
classes but also by the existing external factors such as teachers beliefs on feedback,
cultural, and institutional contexts, among others. This study, in particular,
considers the demands and conventions of academic writing in the way teachers
provide feedback to the students written output.
Given this phenomenon, this study asserts for the provision of the three
types of feedback on students written output in their academic writing classes,
namely, focus on form, focus on content, and focus on the writing style of the
individual students. Since academic writing has its own genre, it is deemed
necessary to include writing style as one of the criteria in providing feedback.
Feedback on form is consist of the marks used by the teacher to correct error on
grammatical features, capitalizations, punctuations, tenses, and other surface
structures (McNamara, Crossley, & McCarthy, 2010). Feedback on content
involves comments on the organization of the idea in the composition. It includes
the sufficient thoughts contained in the composition such as providing main and
supporting ideas, noting details, and length of the paper (Bartlett, 2007). Lastly,
feedback on writing style involves assessment of the use of language, persuasion,
originality, and creativity (Thais & Zawacki, 2006).
These three forms of feedback such as focus on form, content, and writing
style need to be assessed. (1) Assessment of feedback genres is important to
determine if feedback is properly implemented in a writing class. Proper

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implementation considers the type of students, approach of teachers, and general

culture of the institution on assessment. (2) Assessment of feedback is useful as a
mechanism of improving the writing composition of students. This aspect involves
using assessment for learning rather than assessment of learning where
assessment plays a central role for learning to write. (3) Assessment of feedback
serves as a way to monitor the quality of written composition produced by students.
The main end of assessment is to improve students learning. This outcome should
be the main end of the assessment procedure done in writing classes. Effective
outcome is attained if the process of writing is monitored (Magno, in press).
The present study provides evidence of the three genre structure of
feedback in English academic writing using a Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA).
The internal consistency and convergence of the three genres was also determined.
The use of the factor analysis is a way of providing evidence of typologies and
categories of constructs such as feedback in writing. In order to subject the genres
into the factor analysis, the specific forms of feedback needs to be quantified
though assessment. In line with this, a questionnaire was constructed under the
three genres of feedback, form, content, and writing style.

Method

Participants

The participants in the study were 380 Filipino college students who are
enrolled in English Academic Writing classes in a university in Manila, Philippines.
These students are taking a course in teacher education with ages of 16-18 years.
The students use English as their second language, where it is used in the home and
conversation with others. The medium of instruction in the Philippine Higher
education is English and almost all references used are written in English.

Instrument

The present study constructed a 30-item questionnaire that students used in

assessing the degree of feedback that their teachers use in an English writing class.
The items are based on the common practices that teachers focus on when giving
feedback on their students composition writing. The items are categorized into
three major focus: Feedback on form (20 items), content (8 items), and writing style
(7 items). Example of item for feedback on form is the teacher indicates
(underlines/encircles) errors, corrects them and categorizes them with the help of a
marking code. For content, the teacher emphasizes the topic sentence in each
paragraph, the teacher emphasizes organization of ideas. For writing style the
teacher emphasizes on originality and imagination.
The items were reviewed by two English faculties who are also teaching
English academic writing. The internal consistency, factorial and convergent validity
of the genres of feedback was determined.

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Procedure

The 30-item questionnaire was administered to the participants enrolled in

English academic writing classes to determine their views on how their English
teachers marked their compositions. Before selecting the classes, the teachers of the
English writing classes were asked if their students have already started writing
academic papers and if they have received feedback. This was ensured in order for
students to appropriately answer the 30 item questionnaire.
The students were first given the purpose of the study. They were asked if
they are willing to give time and participate by answering the 30 items
questionnaire. Once they agreed, they were given instruction how to accomplish the
form. It took the participants 20 minutes to complete the questionnaire.

Results

The descriptive statistics were derived by obtaining means, standard

deviations, and confidence intervals. The internal consistency of the items for each
category was also determined using Cronbachs alpha. The three genre of feedback
were intercorrelated to assess its convergence. The three-factor structure of the
feedback genre was further assessed using Confirmatory Factor Analysis. To
determine the precision of the questionnaire a Test Information Function (TIF)
was produced using a Graded Response IRT model.

Table 1
Means, Standard Deviation, Confidence Interval, and Cronbachs alpha of the
Forms of Feedback

(1) (2) (3)

1 Form ---
2 Content .56** ---
3 Writing style .57** .75** ---
M 2.97 3.34 3.26
SD 0.42 0.46 0.52
N 380 380 380
95% CI [2.93, 3.01] [3.29, 3.38] [3.21, 3.32]
Cronbachs alpha .79 .78 .83
**p<.01

The scores of the participants are within the middle region for the feedback
on form (M=2.97, SD=0.42). The mean values are above the middle range for
feedback on content (M=3.34, SD=0.46) and writing style (M=3.26, SD=0.52) with
high variability. Accuracy was also obtained because there is a small range within
the confidence interval at 95%.

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Acceptable internal consistencies were also obtained for each of the genres
of the feedback with high Cronbachs alpha values (.79, .78, and, .82). There is a
remarkable internal consistency in the responses of students for the feedback
focused on writing style.
Convergence of the three genres was also attained by obtaining significant
intercorrelations among feedback on content, form, and writing style. An increase
in one type of feedback likely increases the use of other feedback. This shows that
each type of feedback goes along with each other.
The factorial structure of the three genres of feedback is tested using
Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA). The CFA is used because there is a
developed and specific hypothesis about the factorial structure of the forms of
feedback. The structure proposed consists of the forms of feedback in academic
writing that comprise three factors: Feedback on form, content, and writing style.
The CFA is conducted in order to determine the degree to which the solution fit
the data would provide evidence for or against the three factors of feedback in
academic writing.

Figure 1. CFA of the Feedback for Writing

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The results of the CFA showed that all 30 items are significant (p < .001) for
each of their category. This shows that the items are good estimates under their
type of feedback. The intercorrelations of the three factors (form, content, and
writing style) are also significant which achieved convergence. This result was
consistent with the bivariate correlation conducted in the descriptive analysis. The
three-factor structure of the feedback for academic writing was proven where the
model attained an adequate fit. The goodness of fit indices obtained were
2=1409.49, df=402, 2/df=3.5, RMR=.05, GFI=.96, CFA=.92, RMSEA=.08. The
goodness of fit attained means that there is a fit between the three-factor structure of
feedback with the observed data under constraint.
To further support the items evidence of validity in the study, a graded
response IRT model was conducted. The person reliability obtained was .88 with a
separation value of 2.68 and the item reliability obtained is .99 with a separation
value of 9.55. High reliability estimates were obtained and the high separation
values indicate that the items are composed of factors. The Test Information
function (TIF) was estimated and results showed that the measurement of the 30
items for feedback attained precision because the curve covers 95% of the
distribution.

Figure 2. Test Information Function

Discussion

The present study proposed three focus of feedback on students academic

writing: Feedback on form, content, and writing style. A questionnaire was
developed to assess specific manifestations of these factors. The questionnaire was
able to satisfactorily address reliability by having high internal consistency as well as
validity by the convergence of factors, support for its factor structure, and precision
of the measurement tool.
Results of this study give second language writing teachers valuable
information as to the various dimensions of feedback as a pedagogical tool, from

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the perspective of both the teachers and the students. Different feedback practices
employed by writing teachers in L2 classrooms provide a clearer picture of not only
what feedback is used for but also how it is administered by the teachers and how it
is perceived by the students. Most commonly feedback is conducted on the part of
the teacher and students do not have a stake on how feedback is done. Having a
questionnaire that assesses the quality of feedback allows students to (1) become
aware of the specific feedback mechanism used by their teachers and (2) teachers
can monitor how students rate their feedback quality. On the first account of
assessing feedback, students develop a metacognitive awareness of different ways of
doing feedback on their written output. The items specifically points to specific
ways of conducting feedback in the three areas of form, content, and writing style.
Having such awareness creates standards on how they will further improve their
written output. On the second account, teachers can monitor consistently haw they
deliver their feedback based on the students rating. The idea of assessing an
assessment procedure or meta-assessment (i. e., metaevaluation) expands the
current literature of giving feedback on academic writing. Assessing how assessment
is conducted such as feedback in academic writing maintains the utility, accuracy,
feasibility, and propriety of the assessment.
The means (M=3.34) indicate that majority of the feedback is given in terms
of content and a little low for form (M=2.97). However, feedback on content is also
strongly related to the two other forms of feedback. This indicates the emphasis on
the generation of students content-knowledge which provides the substance of the
corpus they are writing about. The results of this study indicated that writing
teachers also looked into the technical aspects of written compositions of L2
students which refer to form. This is explained by the fact that writing teachers
looks for the accuracy in students written output in terms of the choice of language
to be used in expressing ideas. This also includes the employment of discipline in
writing as shown by the proper acknowledgement of experts contribution in the
field being undertaken (writing style). Further, the emphasis on content or style
might be brought by the writing demands of the academic contexts which are
expected to be developed in Academic Writing classes. On the other hand, the
focus on form affirms that writing teachers also give importance to the grammatical
correctness of the written outputs.
The findings of the CFA explain the fact that writing teachers use different
strategies in providing feedback. It showed that the type of feedback is determined
by the purpose and the context that shapes this feedback by having conformed that
feedback is multidimensional (composed of several factors). These findings
contribute to present findings about providing feedback. Previous studies (e. g.,
Treglia, 2008, 2009) have developed ways how beneficial feedback is but the
present study forwards theory by proving a new typology for determining how
feedback is conducted.
Clearly, no matter what the purpose of feedback is, it is worth noting that
students must understand the feedback and be capable of doing something with it.
Teachers must also be consistent with their feedback and adapt it to their students
language needs and their ability to self-correct. The findings are reminders that

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students expect feedback from their teachers and generally feel that feedback helps
them.
Insights on feedback can be generated based on the findings. First, feedback
does not occur in a vacuum but within a hierarchy of interrelating subsystems (Lee,
2004). The overall context of work, teachers beliefs and educational background
determine the types of feedback employed by teachers in their writing classrooms.
Pedagogical implications can be seen from this claim. Teachers should be
involved in the process of change by engaging themselves in seminars where they
critique institutional policies regarding feedback. Further, teachers should also be
encouraged to conduct classroom research to find out the effects of their feedback
practices and how students perceive these feedback strategies. In doing so, the types
of feedback provided by the teachers are those that are found to be effective for the
students. Thus, feedback aligns with the writing needs of the students.
Should teachers keep on providing corrective feedback to the written
outputs of their students? By all means, they should! The success or failure of
corrective feedback depends on the types of error committed by the students, kinds
of writing they are asked to perform, and students proficiency level, among others.
These being the case, appropriate feedback is a must - given at the right time and
in the proper context.
Another contribution the study provides is the method of assessing
feedback from students perception. Feedback is commonly done by teachers and
it is assessed as part of their performance appraisals from a rater. The use of the
questionnaire and rating coming from the students provides an immediate
monitoring scheme for the teachers if feedback is done properly.
The three factors evidenced in the study provide a framework in
categorizing types of feedback. Different authors in academic writing references
provide different perspectives on the types of feedback given for academic
compositions. But the present study was able to provide a nomenclature on three
general aspects of providing feedback useful for establishing and extending further
models that involve feedback in writing as a construct.

References

Bartlett, E. J. (2007). Learning to write: Some cognitive and linguistic components.

Washington: Center for Applied Linguistics.
Bitchener, J., & Knoch, U. (2008). The value of written corrective feedback for
migrant and international students, Language Teaching Research, 12, 409-
431.
Bitchener. J., Young, S., & Cameron, J. ( 2005 ). The effect of different types of
corrective feedback on ESL student writing. Journal of Second Language
Writing, 14, 191-205.
Cohen, A., & Cavalcanti, M. (1990). Feedback on compositions: Teacher and
student verbal reports. In B. Kroll (Ed.), Second language writing research:
Insights for the classroom (pp. 155-177). New York: Cambridge University
Press.

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Fathman, A., & Whalley, E. (1990). Teacher response to student writing: focus on
form versus content. In B. Kroll (Ed.), Second language writing: Research
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Hyland, F., & Hyland, K. (2001). Sugaring the pill: praise and criticism in written
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Lee, I. (2004). Error correction in L2 secondary writing classrooms: the case of
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Lee, I. (2009). Ten mismatches between teachers beliefs and written feedback
practices. ELT Journal, 63(1), 13-22.
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Encyclopedia of learning sciences. New York: Springer.
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About the authors

Dr. Carlo Magno is presently a faculty of the counseling and educational

psychology department of De La Salle University, Manila, Philippines. Majority of
his research is focused on the assessment of student learning. Correspondence can
be addressed to him at crlmgn@yahoo.com.

Ms. Arceli Amarles is presently a faculty of the Philippine Normal University. She
is currently taking her PhD. in English and Applied Linguistics at De La Salle
University, Manila, Philippines.

2011 Time Taylor Academic Journals ISSN 2094-0734