ESL Students’ Comments on Teacher’s Written Corrective Feedback in a Freshman Composition Class

Abstract

This study explored ESL students’ comments on teacher’s written corrective feedback in a freshman composition class to find out whether they thought positively about the feedback and how they perceived the power relationship with the teacher. The study followed a qualitative design. Thirteen ESL students were asked to comment on the teacher’s written corrective feedback on their essays. Findings indicated that students thought highly of the effectiveness of the teacher’s feedback, and most of them viewed the teacher as a person of great power. They appreciated the feedback tremendously and many of them intended to make changes based on the received feedback. Suggestions and limitations of the study are shared to guide future research.

Keywords

• composition
• corrective feedback
• english as a second language (esl)—