The Effect of Instructor Feedback on Developing Iranian ELT Graduate Students’ Critical Academic Writing Skills

Abstract

A major part of any doctoral program concerns academic writing, but most students at the graduate level do not have sufficient skills pertaining to it. For non-native Ph.D. students who need to write English language dissertations, this issue is particularly troublesome since it causes time-consuming extracurricular efforts which can, at times, be really frustrating. The present study was carried out in the form of an action research project to explore the impact of a process-based teaching of writing on the attitudes of 8 Iranian Ph.D. candidates of TEFL towards writing academically. The procedure of the course included phases requiring students to send their completed writing assignments by specified dates, and receive and apply teacher guidance on the texts’ logic, content, consistency, tone and grammar. In-person discussions about the progress were also programmed for each student. The findings indicate that the students in the study felt that the teaching process had a constructive effect on the development of their skills in writing academically. Implications of the study include providing space for dialogue between teachers and students to complement written feedback, keeping the sense of accountability active in student minds by assisting them to self-organize, and realizing that graduate students can need assistance in very basic writing skills and knowledge.