Abstract:
Written Teacher Feedback (WTF) aims at improving the students' writing. Hence, the way in which it is provided for the learners should be taken into account as it makes an impact on the learners' comprehension of the presented comments (Ferris, 2003; Thonus, 2002). The current study was conducted to examine the possible effect of WTF directness types on Iranian EFL learners' ability to perceive the teachers' comments as praise or criticism and the required correction implied in them. To this end, three versions of the same essay, with direct, indirect and hedged comments indexed within them were distributed to 120 EFL learners. The results of ANOVA revealed that the directness type of the WTF would make no significant impact on Iranian EFL learners' ability to perceive the positive and negative comments and their required correction accurately. We might speculate from the findings that writing instructors should focus more on the quality of the WTF rather than its directness type in Iranian context. This would hopefully empower the learners to apply the teachers' comments to enhance the quality of their written products.
Machine summary:
Directness Types and the Possible Effect on EFL Learners' Perception of Written Teacher Feedback Mavadat Saidi Mohadese Khosravi Kharazmi University of Tehran Kharazmi University of Tehran msttut@gmail.
The current study was conducted to examine the possible effect of WTF directness types on Iranian EFL learners' ability to perceive the teachers' comments as praise or criticism and the required correction implied in them.
The results of ANOVA revealed that the directness type of the WTF would make no significant impact on Iranian EFL learners' ability to perceive the positive and negative comments and their required correction accurately.
Generally, extensive research on WTF suggests that indirect speech acts and hedging both decrease the directness of the comments (Ferris, 2007; Hyland Hyland, 2001).
Moreover, a large body of research showed that indirect feedback would enhance the learners' control of their writing (Chandler, 2003; Ferris, 2003, 2007; Hyland Hyland, 2001; Thonus, 1999, 2002).
Notwithstanding the limitation of this statement that commenting on the learners' compositions in their L2 might face them with more difficulty, as WTF aims at improving the learners' writing skill (Ferris, 2007; Guenette, 2007; Lee Schallert, 2008), the writing instructors should take heed of the way they provide the comments (Conrad Goldstein, 1991; Ferris, 2003; Hyland Hyland, 2001; Thonus, 2002) to make their feedback as impressive as possible.
This would provide us with profound insight toward shifting from direct to indirect comments at its appropriate stage of writing instruction in spite of the presence of no difference among EFL learners in identifying positive and negative comments and the requested correction.