Feedback and Transfer in Second Language Writing: A Qualitative Study of ESL Students' Experiences

Second language (L2) writing research has shed light on the important question of whether instructors' feedback (written and/or oral) is beneficial for students' writing (Conrad & Goldstein, 1999; Bitchener, 2008; Ferris, 2006; Truscott, 2007), and yet there are still debates about the efficacy of teacher feedback. One of the reasons why this continues to be a subject of debate is how feedback has been investigated. The research has generally been quantitative in nature and has looked at outcomes (in the form of student writing) as well as teacher practices in terms of the types of feedback they actually provide. What has been missing is qualitative research that looks at feedback dynamics through the eyes of students, especially with regard to how they actually transfer, or attempt to transfer, teacher input to their writing. To address this gap, this qualitative case study explored L2 students' actual feedback experiences through the lens of transfer. The participants for this study were four L2 (second language) graduate students from China enrolled in an academic writing course. The triangulated data source included class observations, field-notes, interviews, questionnaires, self-writing reports, and the actual written products of the participants. Working with such notions as scaffolded feedback (e.g., Donato, 2000; Odo & Yi, 2014; Rassaei, 2014; Weissberg, 2006; Williams, 2002) and situated transfer (e.g., Anson, 2016; Berkenkotter and Huckin, 1993; Rounsaville, 2012; Wardle, 2009) from a socio-cognitive perspective, the foci of the study were: (1) to examine how the L2 students responded to and transferred the teacher's grammar and content feedback; (2) to investigate whether a `transfer climate' emerged as the students moved across the three major writing tasks in the writing course; (3) to determine whether a transfer perspective is useful in understanding the feedback dynamics that place in academic writing courses, and (4) to see whether the transfer models selected for the study were appropriate. The findings of the study showed that the focal participants, in total, tended to engage in grammar-oriented transfer that was of a `low-road' level type, in the sense that the teacher's written and oral feedback mainly focused on grammar issues. In other words, for the most part the students were required to invest relatively little effort in enacting the changes suggested by the teacher. In this regard, the writing course did not generate a substantial and meaningful transfer climate for the students' transfer as they navigated the course's writing assignments, especially in terms of producing insights that would be useful for writing tasks outside the writing course. Also noteworthy in the study was a frequent gap between the feedback the teacher believed was appropriate for the students and the students' expectations for the provision of feedback. It appeared that the teacher mostly viewed the students as language learners and thus focused primarily on language-related issues in their writing, while the students did not see themselves mainly in those terms. Finally, the study shed valuable light on transfer as a "situated activity," that is, as one that is not neutral or isolated in nature, but rather is shaped by a variety of variables in play as students participate in an academic writing course. Taking these findings into consideration, the current study argues that, in the realm of pedagogy, L2 writing teachers should be sensitive to the situated nature of transfer as it applies to feedback and should seek to generate a productive "transfer climate" that promotes both near and far transfer of input provided through teacher feedback. This includes teachers understanding student preferences for the types of feedback they can receive as well as the socio-cognitive experiences students have as they process teacher feedback. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]