How much attention do EFL student writers pay to teacher feedback?, por Prof. María Pía Gómez Laich

María Pía Gomez Laich holds a Teaching Degree in English from UNMdP. Before graduating, she was awarded a Research Fellowship for Advanced Students. The research project she worked on as part of the fellowship explored vocabulary teaching methods in EFL classes. She currently holds a Research Fellowship for Beginning Graduate Students and is member of the research group “Cuestiones del Lenguaje.”

As multiple-draft approaches to writing instruction have permeated many ESL/ EFL classrooms over the past two decades, feeddback has become a central aspect of ESL/ EFL writing programs all over the world. The influence of teacher commentary on student writing is now a topic of crucial importance for second language (L2) writing teachers and researchers, and it has been widely investigated over the past decade (Ferris, 2003). Initial L1 and L2 research concerning the effects of written teacher commentary on student writing assignments revealed that no matter how written teacher feedback was delivered, it appeared to be ineffective in helping students to gain control over composing skills. Worse still, students seemed to either resent or ignore written teacher commentary (Knoblauch and Brannon, 1981; Hillocks, 1986; Leki, 1990, 1991; Truscott, 1996). However, it is of paramount importance to remember that these first studies were conducted in the 1970s and early 1980s and obtained their data from classes and teachers who did not follow the response-and-revision dynamic. Students wrote only one draft of a paper, gave it to the teacher for correction and evaluation, and did not engage in draft revision. However, this discouraging picture changed when research done on the effect of teacher feedback in multiple draft settings indicated that L1 and L2 writers were inclined to pay attention to their teachers feedback. On the basis of these last claims, the purpose of this study was to analyse whether EFL writers at the English Teacher Training Program at Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata (UNMdP) attend to teacher feedback and utilize it in their revisions. The purpose of this presentation will be to share with the audience the results of this research project. An analysis of the data collected will be presented and conclusions of the research will be discussed.