Teachers Helping EFL Students Improve Their Writing Through Written Feedback: The Case of Native and Non-native English-Speaking Teachers' Beliefs

Abstract

Although the efficacy of teacher written feedback has been widely investigated, relatively few studies have been conducted from feedback practitioners' perspectives to investigate teachers' beliefs regarding it, particularly compare beliefs held by teachers with different sociocultural and linguistic backgrounds. Consequently, much remains to be known about teachers' conceptions about written feedback, who has different first languages (L1). To bridge such a gap, we conducted this qualitative study to examine the similarities and differences between native English-speaking (NES) and non-native English-speaking (NNES) teachers' beliefs in Chinese University EFL settings. We analyzed the in-depth interviews with eight teachers through thematic analysis. The findings showed that NES and NNES teachers espoused a range of beliefs in relation to the five themes of written feedback: Purpose, scope, focus, strategy, and orientation. While they shared similar beliefs with regard to feedback focus, their beliefs differed in terms of feedback scope. Important implications are discussed for educational practices.