Speaker
Description
Corrective feedback is considered essential to successful foreign language learning. It is agreed by teachers and students that written corrective feedback (WCF) in writing skills is necessary for English language learners to be aware of their strengths and areas for improvement, which may help to enhance the quality of their writing in the future. Research has investigated the purpose, form, and characteristics of WCF, and scholarly attention has also been increasingly paid to the perceptions of teachers and students toward WCF at the tertiary level. However, there seems to be a paucity of literature on Vietnamese teachers’ perceptions toward WCF on essays written by highschoolers to prepare for the International English Language Test System (IELTS). This is a gap for this research to address, especially when the IELTS has become so common with high school students in Vietnam in recent years, and IELTS Writing Task 2 has been reported to pose multiple challenges to Vietnamese IELTS candidates. Therefore, this study aims to explore the perceptions of several teachers at a Hanoi-based English language center toward their WCF on Writing Task 2 essays written by high school students. Employing a qualitative approach with semi-structured interviews, this study hopes to shed light on how the teachers perceive the features of effective feedback, constraints related to feedback giving, and their expectations for students as feedback receivers. Findings of this research could act as explanations for some characteristics often seen in teachers’ WCF, inform institution leaders about the practice of WCF, and help students better understand their teachers’ related expectations.
Keywords: written corrective feedback, teacher’s perceptions, high school students, the IELTS
