The Significance of Teacher Feedback in EFL Writing for Tertiary Level Foreign Language Learners

摘要

This paper reports on a study conducted at SEEU (South East European University) in FYROM (Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia) analyzing the effect of various types of teacher feedback on student journals in an EFL course. The study was conducted across one semester (15 weeks), in the year 2011. Acknowledging convenience sampling, the 25 subjects who participated in this study were students from the English Department of the Languages Cultures and Communication Faculty. Different type of teacher feedback based on Ellis (2005), Hyland (2010) and its effect on error correction from a student perspective was analyzed. Journals were collected at regular intervals and subjected to a modified content analysis (Newnham, Pantebre & Spark, 1999) to identify the main effects of teacher feedback in journal writing. Semi-structured interviews with students were undertaken to substantiate the essential findings of content analysis.