Abstract
Teachers' response to students' writing is like a teacher-student dialogue where meaning is negotiated, leading to subsequent students' revisions. Much effort has been devoted to the study of the substance and form of teachers' comments. Meanwhile, there has been a growing body of literature on students' reactions to teachers' feedback, including their preferences for the feedback, their problems with understanding the feedback, and their strategies for handling the feedback. Early studies of students' reactions to teachers' feedback are limited to utilizing only survey data without further examining students' written texts and revision behaviors. To better understand the relationship between teachers' feedback and students' reactions, the present study is a case study of an EFL writing classroom that aims to first investigate the nature of a teacher's feedback and then look at students' views on the feedback as well as their incorporation of the feedback in their rewriting. Participants included an EFL writing teacher and his 17 students who were all English majors at a public university in Taiwan. Multiple data sources contained a student questionnaire about their reactions to the teacher's comments, and the students' texts to analyze the teacher's comments and the students' subsequent revisions. In addition, six student volunteers of different writing proficiency levels were recruited for individual think-aloud revision sessions and follow-up interviews. To obtain an in-depth insight into the teacher's comments, a teacher interview was also conducted to find out his practices, perspectives, and problems regarding feedback. The results of the study showed that the teacher made most of the comments on content in his marginal comments or endnotes. However, the students tended to have trouble processing their teacher's content comments and to overlook them in the next draft. Particular forms of commentary (text-specific, imperative, direct, hedged, provided with a strategy) appeared to lead to more successful revisions than others, but the teacher did not include a significant proportion of these comments in his written feedback. As for the students' reactions, they reported reading and paying much attention to their teacher's feedback. The students preferred more direct comments, and would try to understand or act on them. In addition, the students reported utilizing a variety of strategies to handle the feedback, but having problems incorporating it even if they understood the feedback. The findings suggest that teachers' feedback plays a crucial role in students' views on the feedback and the success of their revision. Students' problems with processing the feedback may be lacking communication between teacher and students as to what is commented and how to respond to such feedback. As a result, teachers need to explain their responding practices more clearly and train students with various strategies to deal with the feedback.