The Repository @ St. Cloud State

Open Access Knowledge and Scholarship

Date of Award

12-2019

Culminating Project Type

Thesis

Degree Name

English: Teaching English as a Second Language: M.A.

Department

English

College

College of Liberal Arts

First Advisor

John Madden

Second Advisor

James Robinson

Third Advisor

Matthew Barton

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Keywords and Subject Headings

corrective feedback, indirect feedback, direct feedback

Abstract

Teachers around the globe strive to spur writers on to academic excellence by offering various means of corrective feedback on written tasks. The research presented in this paper has sought to discover the type of feedback teachers believe results in the greatest amount of learner uptake in current and future writing tasks. Data from ten face-to-face interviews with English as a Second Language instructors from primary level to Post-Secondary education have been analyzed and compared in an effort to discover the type of feedback instructors believe aids learners in developing writing skills. Interview questions sought to differentiate between direct and indirect feedback and how teachers implemented these types of feedback in classroom practice. Participants from this study supported the incorporation of a combination of direct and indirect feedback methods when assessing second language writers. They stressed the importance of assigning purpose to each writing task, clearly explaining necessary requirements, and delineating a timeline for completion of progressive steps for the assignment. All ten of the participants reported that they offered written and/or oral corrective feedback to students. They believed that when learners understood why an error was marked, they were more able to incorporate the feedback into current and future writing tasks, thus becoming better writers.

Keywords: corrective feedback, indirect feedback, direct feedback

Comments/Acknowledgements

Submitted to the Repository with a grateful heart for the assistance of Dr. John Madden and his insistence on clarity and organization.

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