Efl students’ Perceptions of Teacher Feedback and Intra-Feedback in Writing Essays

Table 10. Selected interview excerpts of Q4

Student	Interview experts	Main theme
Sahand	While I was implementing the joint feedback of my reviewers, I was almost certain about their accuracy because they spent time on sharing and discussing their comments and checking uncertainties.	It was useful
Rima	As a result of working with peers and discussing comments, I learned to what aspects of essay I should focus. Before that time, I attended to just grammar but now I understand that both grammar and organization should be considered.	It was useful
Sana	Discussing comments was so time-consuming and it tired me a lot.	It was useless

The responses of participants to Q4 indicates that the majority of students (19 students; 90.4%) perceived the intra-feedback practice beneficial in their writing class. It can be concluded from the answers to this question that intra-feedback is useful not only for student writers but also for student reviewers. Table 11 summarizes the excerpts of the students’ responses to Q5.

Table 11. Selected Interview Excerpts of Q5 “what types of teacher comments do you prefer?”

Student	Interview experts	Main theme
Rana	As I usually have grammatical and punctuation errors, I appreciate comments referring to these mistakes.	Only organization
Ali	I prefer to focus more on language and mechanics; however, I am also aware of the importance of content and organization. Since the reviewer or reader should also comprehend what my message is.	Both organization and language
Amir	I prefer comment on grammatical mistakes since, when my paper contains many grammatical errors I cannot convey my meaning so well.	Only language
Roja	I’d like the peer comments to indicate my erroneous sentences because lacking accuracy in composition is a sign of low proficiency in the language.	Critical comments

With regard to Q5, all students perceived teacher’s comments beneficial. Their responses can be summarized as follows: (a) the majority of the students (10students; 47.6%) valued those teacher comments which concerned only organization; (b) five students (23.8%) valued both grammatical and organizational comments; (c) four students (19.0%) valued those teacher comments which concerned only language and mechanics and (d) only two participants (9.5%) preferred to receive critical comments.

Discussion

Findings from the questionnaire data indicated that teacher feedback was more favorable than any other form of feedback. The finding of this study is in line with previous studies. For example, Leki (1991) surveyed college-level ESL composition students and reported that the participants judged their teachers as the most valuable source of feedback whereas fellow ESL students were reported to be the least beneficial. Zhang’s (1995) investigation of eighty-one tertiary level ESL students with various levels of English language proficiency also showed that L2 respondents showed a very strong desire for teacher evaluations over other sources of help including peer feedback in their writing. Likewise, Hyde (1993), Nelson and Carson (1998), and Tsui and Ng (2000) separately investigated the attitudes of different cohorts of L2 learners and maintained that they did not perceive peer feedback as effective as teacher comments. They claimed that the learners attend to their teachers’ advice more than their peers’ suggestions. Amores (1997) also reported that her eight ESL undergraduate students viewed peer-editing activity counter-productive and they were defensive and reluctant of their papers being evaluated by their classmates. Finally, Yang and his colleagues (2006) reported that their Chinese EFL composition learners highly credited their teacher suggestions calling them more professional and valid compared to peer evaluation.

On the other hand, during the interview session, the majority of our students expressed their satisfaction for both teacher and peer feedback. Similarly, Mangelsdorf (1992) claimed that her forty heterogeneous advanced ESL composition participants studying at the University of Arizona assumed peer review technique beneficial as it could help student writers understand their audience expectations, view their texts from their perspectives, and clarify the misunderstandings if needed. Jacobs and his colleagues (1998) also argued that peer and teacher feedback were not mutually exclusive as their survey demonstrated that L2 students from Taiwan and Hong Kong welcomed them both. Finally, Roskams’ (1999) and Saito and Fujita’s (2004) separate investigations of 217 Chinese and 61 Japanese business students which were conducted at Hong Kong and Japan respectively indicated that even though their L2 respondents were more in favor of teacher comments, they also considered their partners’ feedback useful and expressed favorable attitudes towards peer evaluation. Similar findings were obtained in our study, indicating that the participants are greatly in favor of developing error-free essays and became aware of their problematic areas during intra-feedback session.
Conclusion

Findings from the current study indicated that the students had a stronger desire to receive feedback from their teacher compared to other methods of feedback. The students also welcomed intra-feedback and peer comments since the mean scores were significantly high on all constructs; therefore, the findings can reassure EFL writing instructors that peer feedback can also be helpful for their students and that writing instructors should elucidate their rationale and integrate them into the composition courses with confidence. Using intra-feedback technique, teachers can create opportunities for students to improve their knowledge and become more aware of the criteria of effective reviewing; by intra-feedback implementation, students feel more confident in such writing classrooms and can control their learning more than before since they discover their own competence as writers and reviewers. Learners’ understanding of their roles in providing effective feedback may encourage them to actively participate in the task and appreciate the benefits of peer feedback. Hence, it is proposed that intra-feedback can be used as a complementary activity to address some of the challenges associated with peer evaluation; namely, the validity of peer feedback and distrust in peer feedback.

It should be noted that this study had some methodological limitations which need to be considered. The first limitation is that the study was a classroom-based research with intact group; therefore, other variables such as gender, sampling, number of learners and their exposure to other classes may intervene in the effect of their preference. Another limitation of the study is that it has only considered one genre of writing, which is argumentative essay. The third shortcoming is that only students’ perceptions were taken into account. Future research may therefore provide a wider view of this issue by considering the learning outcomes, the quality of students’ comments as a result of teacher versus intra-feedback.

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1^ Shirin Abadikhah ,Department of English Language and Literature, University of Mazandaran, Pasdaran Street, 47415, P.O. Box: 416, Babolsar, Iran (corresponding author, phone: [phone]; e-mail< [e-mail]).