Despite the fact that there has been a growing body of research investigating the effectiveness of written corrective feedback (WCF) for improving L2 learners’ writing accuracy, fewer studies have investigated learners’ preferences and perceptions of WCF. This paper, which is based on a doctoral research project, reports on an exploratory study that investigated the preferences and perceptions related to the aspects of WCF in an EFL context. Qualitative data was collected from focus groups administered to a sample of intermediate and pre-intermediate General Foundation Programme (GFP) students. The results showed that the students valued feedback and preferred the comprehensive feedback approach. They wanted it to be indirect and unfocused as well as teacher initiated. The findings also showed that they perceived their teacher feedback as timely, involving a variety of techniques, sufficient, efficient, clear, explicit, familiar to them, comprehensive. Despite all that, they sometimes faced some challenges in understanding their teachers’ comments. The paper concludes with some implications for teaching and learning.
Teachers’ writing proficiency and assessment ability: the missing link in teachers’ written corrective feedback practice in an Iranian EFL context
