The effect of teacher written feedback on students' written compositions

Abstract

It is assumed that learners of English as a Foreign Language are usually unable to improve their compositions because they are rarely encouraged to revise their writing in response to teachers' written comments. So, this study is an attempt to investigate the effect of teacher written feedback on written compositions of second-year students of English at Larbi Ben M'Hidi University, Oum El Bouaghi. Il is hypothesized that the provision of teacher written feedback would help students improve their compositions both in terms of content and form. To lest out this hypothesis, a quasi-experimental design was conducted. The entire population consisted of two classes; thus, the investigator randomly selected one class as a control group and the other one as an experimental group. All participants wrote a comparison-and-contrast composition and revised it through multiple drafting. The control group participants revised their compositions without receiving any feedback, whereas the experimental subjects revised their compositions after receiving in-between draft written feedback. The findings of the paired-samples t-test as well as the independent-samples t-test proved that the experimental subjects improved both the content and form of their compositions. The comparison of the results of the two writing aspects revealed that students performed better in content. The findings of the questionnaire, which was administered after the study, demonstrated that students paid more attention to comments on content. They also indicated that students appreciated teacher written feedback because it helped them correct their errors and improve their writing. In addition, the majority of them reported that they referred to lecture notes and used dictionaries to process the teacher feedback. Eventually. nearly all students claimed considering teacher written feedback as a motivational factor that considerably assists them to revise their composition drafts.