Technology-mediated written corrective feedback : EFL teachers' beliefs, practices and students' preferences in Oman

Abstract

Seven writing teachers and their 70 General Foundation Programme students took part in the research (GFP). Technology Mediated Written Corrective Feedback (TMWCF) beliefs and self-reported practices were investigated using semi-structured interviews with instructors. Classroom observation was used to have a better understanding of the teachers' real TMWCF practices. The researcher also utilized student text analysis to investigate instructor comments on students' work in an attempt to find triangulation. Finally, focus groups with students were held to find out what the students thought of TMWCF and what they thought their instructors were doing in terms of TMWCF practices. According to the findings of the study, teachers' ideas about error detection and repair matched up well with what they did. However, teachers' attitudes on redrafting, feedback explicitness, feedback volume, feedback source, and feedback emphasis did not match their behaviours. Similarly, the study showed that students' preferences mirrored their instructors' practices on the explicitness of feedback, the amount of feedback, and the source of feedback, although they were only partially congruent in TMWCF's correction of errors. On the other hand, two areas of incongruence were identified between the students' preferences and the teachers’ practices concerning the focus of the feedback and praising comments. TMWCF experiences indicated that students agreed that their professors explained to them why feedback is important, they provided timely feedback, and they utilized various forms and amounts of feedback were sufficient for the students to agree on these findings. However, there were three areas where teachers' practices and students' viewpoints diverged, such as the difference in the focus of feedback, the students' knowledge of the error code and remarks, and producing a second draft. The contributions of this research include better insight into the link between the students' TMWCF experiences and preferences and their instructors' TMWCF beliefs and practices. In addition, several instructional implications can be proposed considering the findings, such as using technology-mediated feedback to create a social collaborative learning experience and favourable attitudes towards learning English writing. Based on the results and findings, the researcher offers these recommendations for future research.