Elena: The Symposium on Second Language Writing (SSLW) took place last month, where you gave a plenary talk about the role of written corrective feedback. Since not all of our readers could attend, would you mind sharing some highlights of your talk with us?

Icy: Yes, I gave a plenary talk at the last SSLW held in Auckland on a practice-based issue about written corrective feedback (WCF). The title of my talk was “Working hard or working smart: Comprehensive versus focused written corrective feedback in L2 writing.” In the talk, I began by establishing the centrality of the topic of WCF in second language (L2) writing. Knowing that probably not everyone in the audience was familiar with the topic, I then attempted to clarify key terminology including comprehensive WCF, selective WCF, unfocused WCF, and focused WCF. I presented these terms on a continuum and argued that, particularly for classroom teachers, it might be more useful to adopt the terms comprehensive WCF to refer to teachers’ attempt to respond to all written errors, as well as focused WCF or selective WCF to refer to an alternative approach where teachers respond to a number of error types. After that, I presented some research highlights on comprehensive and focused WCF. The rest of my talk focused on some major practice-based issues regarding WCF, such as why teachers should consider a focused approach to WCF, arguments for and against it, how they should go about error selection, whether and how focused WCF should be combined with comprehensive WCF, what WCF strategies teachers can use, and finally what “good” WCF is.

Elena: WCF has been a popular topic in second language writing research for quite a while. How did the approaches to this issue change over the years? What do we know about WCF now that we didn't know before?

Icy: The development of WCF research is interesting. Decades ago, writing teachers responded to student written errors meticulously, embracing an error avoidance approach without questioning their own taken-for-granted assumptions about their practice. Then John Truscott published his landmark article “The case against grammar correction in L2 writing classes” in Language Learning in 1996 and put forward a radical view about the harmfulness of error correction. Since then, WCF has become an exceedingly vibrant topic for research. Researchers began to address various aspects of WCF, including its overall efficacy, comparing direct with indirect WCF, and focused with comprehensive WCF. Now, I think we have research evidence to show that WCF does have an important role to play in the L2 writing classroom and that it should not be abandoned.

Elena: What issues in current research on feedback do you find most interesting? What excites you as a scholar?

Icy: Since I began my career as a secondary school teacher having to mark tons of compositions on a regular basis, I am most interested in classroom-based research that carries direct implications for frontline teachers. Although research has pointed to focused WCF as a more desirable approach to written feedback, teachers in Hong Kong are still spending a massive amount of time responding to errors in student writing and embracing comprehensive WCF as a rule of thumb. Although many teachers do not find comprehensive WCF effective and cost-effective, very few of them are brave enough to change this ingrained practice. Thus, I am very interested in research that looks into the effects of focused WCF. I hope that teachers in Hong Kong can explore more effective ways to respond to student writing so that they can really use feedback as a formative assessment tool to enhance student writing.

Elena: Could you tell us more about the research that you do to encourage teachers in Hong Kong to move in that direction?

Icy: In my recent study, I conducted school-based research in three secondary schools to explore how teachers introduced change to their feedback practices. To prepare teachers for innovation, I delivered a series of workshops on the topic of feedback in writing that provided participating teachers with opportunities to reflect on their conventional practices and to learn about alternative approaches, such as focused WCF and delivering feedback through the use of rubric-based forms that align assessment with instruction. After the workshops, the teachers worked out a plan that suited their school context and undertook feedback innovation in their writing classroom. Using the case study design, I collected interview data from teachers and students, conducted lesson observations, and administered pre- and poststudy writing tests to find out students’ writing performance before and after the study.

Elena: You mentioned that in your plenary talk at SSLW you described "good" WCF. Is focused feedback one of the characteristics of "good" feedback?

Icy: In my plenary talk, I drew on the work of Hartshorn and Evans (2015) and characterized “good” WCF as meaningful, manageable, timely, and constant (which they refer to as dynamic WCF). Focused WCF is “good” for L2 learners who make a large number of errors in writing as such an approach is manageable for both learners and the teacher. With advanced learners, however, since they do not make a lot of errors in writing, comprehensive WCF may be more desirable than focused WCF.

Elena: From your experience as a teacher educator, what are the biggest challenges in training writing instructors how to provide feedback?

Icy: I think teachers in Hong Kong, as in similar contexts, are simply too used to marking errors meticulously, and they are very hesitant to change their conventional practice. They worry about how to adopt a more focused approach to written corrective feedback, how they can overcome the different problems that arise from change, what students and parents think, and whether innovation can really help students improve their writing.

Elena: As my last question, could you share your views on the future of feedback studies in SLW? For example, what kinds of research/topics are or will become popular and important in this area?

Icy: Since responding to student writing is one of the most important aspects of writing teachers’ work, I think feedback in L2 writing will remain a vibrant research topic. I believe research informed by sociocultural perspectives will become important, particularly longitudinal and classroom-based research that investigates feedback in real classroom contexts.

Elena: Thank you, Icy!

Icy: Thanks for the opportunity.

Reference

Hartshorn, K. J., & Evans, N. W. (2015). The effects of dynamic written corrective feedback: A 30-week study. Journal of Response to Writing, 1(2), 6–34.

Elena Shvidko is a PhD candidate in the Department of English at Purdue University. She has taught ESL in academic and community contexts, and she currently teaches first-year composition at Purdue University. Her research areas include L2 writing, multimodal interaction, and TESOL.