Feedback On Feedback-Explorations On Students' Responses To Teachers' Commentary In Efl Writing

As one of the four basic skills of language learning, writing has been drawing more and more attention of teachers and researchers in the field of second language acquisition. Research on second language writing has grown as a sub-discipline of both composition and second language studies. To improve EFL writing teaching, researchers and teachers have done a lot to introduce methodological options to EFL writing teachers. Providing feedback to students is one of the writing teachers'most important tasks. It is essential for writing teachers and researchers to consider how to make the most of teacher feedback in order to improve students'writing ability. Research indicates that the effectiveness of teacher feedback has a significant impact on students'writing ability.The study aims at exploring students'attitudes towards English writing, teachers'actual feedback in EFL writing, and students'preferences for teacher feedback. Data were collected from questionnaires and interviews. Six hundred and forty-eight students (non-English majors) from six universities and colleges in Shanghai and Hangzhou were involved in the study.Based on the analysis of data, some of the findings are as follows: 1) Less than half of the students were not interested in writing, and only around one quarter of them said they were confident enough in their writing ability; 2) There were some discrepancies between the actual teacher feedback and students'preferences for them; 3) Students'individual differences, namely gender, personality and language proficiency, to some extent, affected their preferences for teacher feedback.The author finally proposes a model for teacher feedback in EFL writing, in order to promote the effectiveness of teacher feedback, and meanwhile improve students'writing ability.