Investigating written corrective feedback: (Mis)alignment of teachers’ beliefs and practice

Abstract

Abstract Written corrective feedback (WCF) refers to the feedback provided by writing teachers on students’ writing. While much attention has been given to the (in)effectiveness of WCF on writing accuracy or skills in L2 writing research, there has been relatively less research on whether teachers’ beliefs regarding WCF are aligned with their actual correction practices. This study investigates the (mis)alignment between teachers’ beliefs of their WCF practice and their actual practice, using questionnaire and interview data from five English writing teachers in a Chinese EFL context who provided WCF on 100 student essays. The results indicate a degree of alignment between teachers’ beliefs and practice in certain instances. However, three key areas of misalignment between beliefs and WCF practice were found, namely (1) most teachers mistakenly believed they primarily provide direct feedback while providing more indirect feedback in practice; (2) the teachers believed they often indicated the total number of errors in the margin, despite never doing so in practice, and; (3) WCF on local issues received more attention than global issues, despite teachers believing they offered more feedback on global issues. Contextual issues including time constraints, excess workload and perceptions of students’ attitude to WCF were found to result in the eventual misalignment between beliefs and WCF practice. To resolve this issue, it is recommended that students and teachers cooperate to achieve the ultimate goals of written feedback, while in-service teachers should undertake periodic explicit professional training on WCF provision.