| Teacher written feedback on students‘writing has been one of the most importantresearch topics in the field of writing instruction, for it can influence students‘interest inwriting and overall quality of their work. In fact, many researchers have explored teacherfeedback from various perspectives. However, an overwhelming majority of the studieswere conducted in ESL contexts and many studies only focused on student revisionfollowing written feedback, which limits their value in examining the effectiveness offeedback.As a longitudinal case study carried out in EFL contexts, the present study aims toinvestigate the characteristics of written feedback that a teacher provided for his studentsduring an academic year and examine the effects of the feedback. A writing teacher and anintact class, altogether20EFL students, from a university in Shanghai, were involved. Inthe study, six essays on different topics written by each participating student were collectedand marked by the participating teacher; the teacher‘s opinions about written feedback inL2writing were elicited through conducting a teacher questionnaire in order to help theresearcher get a deep insight into what he was really thinking about in the marking process;in addition, another questionnaire to investigate the EFL students‘responses andpreferences to teacher feedback were completed at the end of the academic year.The results revealed:(1) The teacher focused both on surface-and deep-level aspectsof EFL students‘essays, preferring to give direct error feedback and putting emphasis ontext ideas in commentary, which was supported and welcomed by his students;(2) Theteacher written feedback did have favorable effects on the EFL students‘L2writing; and (3)Most of the students could realize the importance of feedback and treat it in a seriousmanner. This study suggests potential implications for how to provide effective teacherwritten feedback in Chinese EFL writing classes. |
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