Carroll (2002 cited in Howell 2008:184) argued that writing develops as academic literacy proceeds idiosyncratically and over time. Writing improvement does not take place without practice and sufficient feedback. The ability to write well and effectively is not an innate skill; rather, writing is learned through practice and needs a lot of effort. The process of writing necessitates different techniques in order to meet readers’ expectations; these are usually the teachers who evaluate their students’ writing. Feedback in the process of writing is very important although it is a complicated issue in L2 writing. The reason of the complexity is that teachers in L2 writing subjects are overwhelmed when things are complicated as they are both language teachers and skills teachers. The teachers consider whether feedback should be given or not and if so, what kind of feedback and how it should be presented.
With regard to defining feedback, Russell (1995) defined feedback as “letting trainees (in this students) know what they have done that has reached the standard, and how to progress towards the required standard’’. Another definition is that feedback is an input from a reader to a writer with the objective of providing information to the writer for revision, and “feedback is of utmost importance to the writing process’’ (Myles, 2002: 13). Additionally, feedback is a powerful communication skill. Giving and receiving feedback on performance is a highly significant part of the process of skills development, and the way in which it is given is extremely important. When it is specifically targeted towards students it can build confidence and competence. On the other hand, if given poorly it can have a negative impact and may lead to deterioration in performance.
Through feedback, students get know the quality of their writing and whether it meets the requirement or whether they need to work harder. This is especially the case when most teachers evaluate their students based on solid criteria. Tomlinson states that “An important feature of successful teaching is to obtain a close relationship between what is expected of students, and the learning experiences that are provided to them’’ (1976: 15).
Several researchers point out that the writing skill requires frequent and guided practice inside the classroom (Ferris, 2003). As a general rule, students need thorough instruction through their writing starting from planning to revision of their compositions (this is also known as process approach to the teaching of writing), as explained in section 3.4. Students can follow the instructions throughout, encouraging them to think critically about their writing, which is achieved when their work is corrected. I strongly agree with scholars who think correction is not only putting a mark on the work but also provides feedback which helps students and facilitates revision. To give effective feedback, teachers should have an idea of each student’s individual writing problems in order to provide an appropriate feedback that encourages students to improve their writing and this is not at all an easy task for teachers.
Feedback can be given in either written form or verbally. For example, written feedback can take different forms such as direct correction, indirect correction and coding. These can be explained as follows:
Direct correction is when teachers indicate students’ errors and amend them by providing the corre
ct structural or lexical form on their scripts
(Laland, 1982; Robb et al., 1986; Semke, 1984; Van Beuningen et al., 2008, 2012).
Indirect correction is when feedback only indicates errors in students’ writing by either underlining them or circling them with no corrections (Bitchener and Knoch, 2010b; Van Beuningen, 2008).
Coding is when the type of error is located and defined through certain codes for example S for spelling and WW for word order.
In contrast, verbal or oral feedback is relatively distinct from written feedback, although it is possible to an extent to draw parallels between the approaches to written feedback outlined above and the forms of oral feedback delineated below. Oral or verbal feedback can take many forms, as mentioned by Park (2010). Below is one of the main approaches to oral feedback:
One to one face to face or dialogue as described in Williams (2002).
During the face to face feedback sessions, positive or negative oral recast where the teacher verifies an utterance by repeating it, or by indicating what is inaccurate and reformulating it (Afitska, 2012) may take place. Also, explicit corrections by directly indicating the incorrect form the student used and then providing the correct form (Lyster and Ranta, 1997) can occur during the session. This enhances the leaning process and provides the learners with a comprehensive, clear and direct input, where the learners can ask about unclear ideas and comments.
Feedback needs to be handled with care by both teachers and learners. Teachers have to provide feedback based on the students’ needs and what the teachers expect their students to learn from it. On the other hand, students have to know that in order to revise their work accurately it takes more than just copying the teachers’ correction. It involves revising their drafts carefully to find the reasons beside these errors. Therefore, feedback is not only to be written but also it should be in a way of discussion with the students as it is one of the most helpful ways of reviewing the mistakes that were made. Bearing in mind Russell’s (1995) definition of feedback above, feedback is particularly important for writing skills; if there is no feedback the students do not know where the mistakes are and whether what they produce in their writing is right or wrong, and they will therefore not know if there is need to change, especially when it is in a way of a conversation. Accordingly, Russell states that “only through feedback can development be achieved, or, according to the “input- process-output’’ model; only with feedback can progress be made’’ (1995:22). The present study
examines the efficacy of two techniques of feedback in teaching writing: teachers’ written feedback and face to face feedback.