Teachers' Written Feedback Practices in Promoting Academic Writing Skills of ESL Learners

Abstract

Higher education students, need to develop strong academic writing skills to be successful. Therefore, improving one's command of the English language, and specifically, one's command of academic writing at the undergraduate level, is essential for educational excellence. The most significant difficulty, on the other hand, is related to untrained instructors and inefficient pedagogical practices as a major cause of poor academic writing skills. As a result, this study was undertaken using a qualitative technique to investigate students' perceptions about the written feedback practices their teachers employ to improve academic writing skills among them. The population of this study consisted of all the enrolled students in the universities in the province of Sindh. By using a convenient sampling technique, 30 students were recruited to collect the data from conducting interviews. The findings indicated various helpful written feedback practices teachers utilize to develop academic writing skills in university students, which include grammatical correction, constructive suggestions, highlighting errors, and providing corrections. Based on these data, it is vital for concerned authorities to organize workshops or training programs to enhance teachers' capabilities to employ various kinds of written feedback techniques to promote academic writing skills among undergraduate students.