Identifying the Linguistic Features and Content of Teacher Electronic Feedback and Students’ Text Revisions in Writing

Abstract

Despite the substantial work on teachers’ feedback on students’ writing, scant attention has been paid to electronic (e-) feedback. In order to fill up this gap, the current study on teacher e-feedback provided to ten pairs of Saudi learners via E-Blackboard identified seven categories of the linguistic features of e-feedback: directives, questions, combined comments, confirmation, error corrections, praise and single statements on linguistic accuracy, content, organization and appropriateness. The students made most text revisions in responding to directive feedback, questions and combined comments, while least text revisions in responding to error corrections, suggestions and statements, and no text revisions in responding to confirmation and praise. The quantitative counts of these categories of feedback and students’ responses demonstrate the prevalent categories of feedback and text revisions. Most of the teacher’s electronic feedback focused on issues related to students’ use of the language in writing, followed by content and idea development, appropriateness and organization. Similar results were obtained from the quantitative analysis of students’ text revisions. This could be due to students’ low language proficiency and inadequate language competence in English, which hindered them from using accurate language in their assignments. Cross-referencing of students’ text revisions to the various patterns of teacher e-feedback revealed that most of students’ text revisions resulted from directive feedback, questions and combined comments. The study offers pedagogical implications for teacher feedback practices and students’ responses to feedback.