Ineffective Feedback: A Study of EFL Student Writing at the Tertiary Level

Abstract

To achieve educational goals and to do well in exams, having a good command over writing is inevitable. As students get a chance to memorize other’s work to pass in the exams until the tertiary level, writing own words, using cohesive markers, and brainstorming become very challenging for learners at this level (Hasan and Badi, 2015). Although learners face problems in writing, they can improve their performance by working on the given feedback even at university level by their teachers and peers. According to Ur (Ur, 1996 in Ali and Kabir, 2012) feedback is a response to evaluate learner’s proficiency level and to develop it. However, teachers give feedback to their students but their improvement in writing is not noticeable even after their post graduation, which is a matter of concern. Thus, this study aims to investigate what is considered as the ineffective feedback in terms of writing and what factors are working behind to make a feedback ineffective. It is found from the findings of both teachers and students that there are mismatches between students’ and teachers’ preference of feedback. Both teachers and students responded that feedback in writing is different from feedback of other skills as in writing there are a lot of aspects to comment on by the teachers. It is also found that though teachers are giving feedback, because of the rigid, fixed and inflexible nature of feedback in writing, it is sometimes demotivating for the learners. So, in order to make the given feedback effective, teachers need to take into consideration students' demands and needs, and they should also make the feedback flexible so that learners can work on it easily.