WRITTEN CORRECTIVE FEEDBACK: STUDENTS' PERCEPTION AND PREFERENCES

Abstract

There have been noticeable studies probing into how written corrective feedback (WCF) could help to improve EFL students' awareness of grammatical terms. However, a few are known to investigate how the students’ perceptions and preferences could prompt their approbation toward the feedback. This study reports on Indonesian university students’ views of written corrective feedback in a writing class. Furthermore, their preferences for different types of WCF are also investigated. This survey study collected data by distributing a questionnaire to 387 participants from two different universities in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. The results indicated that although the participants favored different types of feedback, all of them shared a sympathetic attitude towards the feedback given. In particular, they believed that WCF could facilitate to improve their writing skills and language knowledge. Through WCF, they became aware of what to avoid and improve to create good writing. The results further indicated that of several different types of feedback strategies, direct feedback performed as the most favored to improve students’ writing skills, followed by metalinguistic, reformulation, and indirect strategy. Overall, the findings ratified the value of WCF for EFL students in Indonesia. More researches in this area are expected to furnish more contributive information.

Keywords: EFL students, perception, writing, written corrective feedback