(Mis)alignment in Relation to Written Corrective Feedback: the Teachers’ Beliefs and Practices vs the Students’ Preferences in an EFL Context

Abstract

This paper, which investigates written corrective feedback (WCF) in the context of English as a Foreign Language (EFL), will address two research questions: (a) to what extent are the teachers’ beliefs and practices regarding the provision of WCF on the students’ EFL writing aligned?; (b) to what extent do the students’ preferences match the teachers’ practices regarding WCF? The participants of the study were nine writing teachers and their 75 pre-intermediate and intermediate students in one General Foundation Programme (GFP) in Oman. Semi-structured interviews, classroom observation, student text analysis, and student focus groups were employed as the research instruments of the study to attempt to answer the research questions. The study revealed more areas of misalignment than alignment between the teachers’ beliefs and practices related to WCF. The areas of misalignment are related to the writing of praising comments, redrafting, the amount of feedback, the explicitness of feedback and the focus of feedback, whereas the areas of alignment are related to the identification and the correction of errors. In addition to that, the findings indicated that there were more areas of congruence than incongruence between the students' preferences and the teachers’ beliefs and practices regarding WCF. As for the areas of congruence, they are related to the explicitness of feedback, the amount of feedback, the source of feedback, and the correction of errors. The areas of incongruence, however, are related to the focus of the feedback and the writing of praising comments. The paper concluded by providing some implications for pedagogy related to WCF.