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The Korean Association for the Study of English Language and Linguistics
[ Article ]
Korea Journal of English Language and Linguistics - Vol. 21, No. 0, pp.551-580
ISSN: 1598-1398 (Print) 2586-7474 (Online)
Print publication date 31 Jan 2021
Received 15 May 2021 Revised 20 Jun 2021 Accepted 27 Jun 2021
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15738/kjell.21..202106.551

L2 Writers’ Engagement and Needs for Teacher Written Feedback: A Case of a Korean College English Composition Class

JungEun Choi
Faculty of Liberal Education, Seoul National University choi7541@snu.ac.kr


© 2021 KASELL All rights reserved
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

As a relatively under-researched area, the present study focused on L2 writers’ reactions to teacher written feedback in a comprehensive way. Specifically, multidimensional student engagement involving behavioral, affective, and cognitive reactions and student needs for teacher commentary were examined through a triangulation of data collection. As a case study, the present study examined a real-world practice of teacher feedback provided in an authentic English composition class in South Korea. One native English teacher and 13 Korean college students participated in this study. This paper first describes the types of teacher written comments according to the intent, linguistic features, text specificity, and the presence of hedges. Then, it examines the students’ uptake in the subsequent revision by the feedback types, attitudinal responses and cognitive processing, and their wishes for the kind of teacher written feedback they would like to receive. The results revealed that content-related comments dominated in the teacher’s end comments, whereas a majority of the marginal notes addressed linguistic features. However, in the students’ revision process, the grammar-related marginal comments were often ignored due to changes in content by the teacher’s end comments. In addition, characteristic patterns for emotional and cognitive engagement and students’ actual needs were observed. Based on the results, pedagogical implications are suggested.

Keywords:

teacher written feedback, student engagement, student needs, process writing in English, Korean college students

Acknowledgments

This article is a developed version of the author’s master’s thesis.

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