Examining EFL learners’ quantity and quality of uptake of teacher corrective feedback on writing across three different editing settings

Abstract

Despite the role of dialogue in feedback uptake, no study has examined students’ uptake in different dialogue-based settings. Therefore, this study on 20 EFL Saudi students examined their uptake of feedback in self-dialogue-based, learner-learner dialogue-based, and teacher-learner dialogue-based editing settings. Analysis of teacher corrective feedback and students’ first and revised drafts of essays revealed that the rates of uptake quantity (92.3 %, 97.5 % & 95.4 %) and uptake quality (71.3 %, 80.5 % & 93.4 %) varied across the three settings, respectively. Moreover, while students integrated more global feedback in the teacher-learner dialogue (38.8 %) and learner-learner dialogue-based editing settings (38.8 %), they integrated more local feedback (69.1 %) in the self-dialogue-based editing setting. A post-hoc analysis showed significant differences in the uptake quantity in favor of learner-learner dialogue-based and teacher-learner dialogue-based editing settings and in the uptake quality in favor of the teacher-learner dialogue-based editing setting. Moreover, learner-learner and teacher-learner dialogue-based editing settings led to higher global feedback quality than self-dialogue-based setting. Students’ local feedback uptake differed significantly for the self-dialogue-based and teacher-learner dialogue-based editing settings. Despite the perceived learning benefits of feedback dialogues, students were challenged by initial apprehensions, feedback nature and technology use in feedback dialogues. The study offers useful implications for teachers and researchers.