Student and teacher preferences in written corrective feedback

For the most part, teachers and students agree that WCF is an important part of language learning (Corpuz, 2011); however, there is disagreement about the type of feedback that best facilitates students’ development. This disagreement extends both to the typology of WCF (i.e., direct, indirect, metalinguistic) and to the question of whether feedback should be comprehensive or focus on specific error types (Ellis, 2009). Many studies (e.g., Biber, Nekrasova, & Horn, 2011; Kang & Han, 2015) have investigated the effectiveness of WCF in improving writing; however, few researchers have studied teachers’ and students’ perceptions of the usefulness of feedback on specific categories of error. These perceptions impact instruction, particularly when they are not aligned. Students may believe that their teachers have failed to address the most crucial errors in their writing. Conversely. teachers may believe that students have disregard important feedback. This report describes an investigation of preferences in WCF, examining the importance that teachers and students ascribe to five categories of feedback: content, grammar, organization, spelling, and vocabulary. These categories encompass the major areas of WCF. Based on a review of the literature and the state of language education in Thailand, we hypothesized that teachers’ and students’ preferences regarding WCF in the five areas studied would differ.