The Effect of Teacher Feedback on Student Motivation in an EFL Writing Class

Research studies on written corrective feedback have mostly focused on teacher input to students on their writing. However, this study concentrates on the effect of teacher feedback on student motivation and how it may affect their efforts to improve on future writing. Participants of this study consisted of 16 EFL students engaged in an English writing course in a Korean university. These participants were administered two self-report questionnaires to determine their affective responses to teacher written feedback on their writing. Results indicated that these students considered marking of all errors, especially errors in grammar, were very important to them to improve on new writing efforts. Teacher written feedback on organizational errors and vocabulary were also somewhat important to them. Feedback on content or ideas, punctuation and spelling were of lesser or no value to them. Findings also indicated that if these student preferences for feedback were utilized by the teacher, it seemed to have a positive motivational impact on these students to improve their writing skills. These results were triangulated with student interviews and teacher observations. The study concluded with a discussion of pedagogical implications, limitations and possible areas for additional research.