Teacher and Student Attitudes toward Teacher Feedback

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Teacher and Student Attitudes toward Teacher Feedback

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Article

Teacher and Student Attitudes toward Teacher Feedback Nugrahenny T. Zacharias Satya Wacana Christian University, Indonesia [email protected]
Abstract ■ This study aims to explore students’ attitudes toward teacher feedback. The study used a triangulation of participants and methods in which the practice of feedback was seen from the perspectives of students and teachers collected from the quantitative data (questionnaires) and qualitative data (open-ended items in question-naires and interviews). A total of 100 students participated in filling in the question-naires and 21 of them were interviewed using a semi-structured format. In addition, there were 20 teachers who completed the questionnaires and 10 of them were inter-viewed using the same semi-structured format. The findings show that generally teachers and students have a marked preference for teacher feedback. The high pref-erence for teacher feedback was mainly the result of the respondents’ positive atti-tudes towards teacher feedback. Interestingly, student preferences for teacher feedback also stemmed from their awareness that teachers control grades. The data collected from the questionnaires and interviews indicated that students preferred teacher feedback that was specific since this kind of feedback would facilitate students in the revision process. Students also show a high preference for feedback which focused on language. Compared to feedback on content, feedback on form was considered to be more helpful. Students often complained that teacher feedback on content tended to be general and sometimes, contradictory to student ideas. Moreover, the interview data illustrated that teacher feedback contributed greatly to students’ emotional states particularly their motivation and attitudes towards writing. Keywords ■ attitudes, coding, peer feedback, teacher feedback, teacher writing.
Introduction Writing has always been considered one of the four important skills con-tributing to students’ language learning. This is particularly so because in almost every course, there is a writing element of some kind. Despite the

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39 Teacher and Student Attitudes toward Teacher Feedback

presence of writing in almost every element of the language course and the abundant amount of time students spend on writing, many students have expressed their concerns about not being able to do it well. There have been many attempts to help students to improve their writing quality and increase their motivation for writing tasks. One important attempt is by providing feedback. In fact, Coffin et al. (2003) maintain that ‘the provi-sion of feedback on students’ writing is a central pedagogic practice’ (Coffin et al. 2003: 102). Most writing courses in the English Department at Satya Wacana Christian University (Writing 2 until Writing 4 courses) allocate time for providing feedback. The writing classes mostly follow somewhat the same format: students are given a chance to write the first draft and then bring it to the class. Feedback is usually given on the first draft by the class teacher and/or the peers. Afterwards, students revise the drafts based on the input they have received from the teacher and/or their peers. It needs to be noted that although feedback can come from the class teacher and the student’s peers, teacher feedback continues to be consid-ered of utmost importance. This can be seen from the time allocated for the teacher-student conferencing outside the classroom, which often takes twice as long as the scheduled class hours. Not only do the teachers’ themselves consider teacher feedback as the most important, but so do the students. This is based on my personal experience when I was teaching Writing 4 in the English Department at Satya Wacana Christian University for three trimesters.1 In every trimes-ter, there was one writing assignment where the feedback only came from their classmates and not from me. At that time I asked the students to give comments and correction on their friends’ drafts. Interestingly, students often came to me and asked if their friends’ corrections and comments were correct. This indicates that the students themselves think teacher feedback is more authoritative. Regardless of the time and effort spent in giving feedback, many teach-ers in the English Department have complained that students’ writing did not improve and students keep on repeating the same mistakes. This makes me wonder if students do get any benefit from feedback. There seems to be a mismatch between the students’ and the teacher’s perception in the use of feedback. On the one hand, the teacher feels that the students have not attended to the feedback optimally. Most teachers assumed that if the students attended to the teacher feedback, their writing would be ‘perfect’. On the other hand, the students feel that they have responded to the

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40 Regional Language Centre Journal 38.1

feedback accordingly. This mismatch is the central reason that this topic of this study was selected.

The Study Methodologically the study employed a combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches. The respondents to the questionnaire study com-prise 100 students and 30 teachers. The student respondents were selected based on those who have taken all the writing courses in the department. Students who have completed all the writing courses, were considered to have experienced a wide variety of teacher feedback. Participants in the interviews included 21 students and 10 teachers. Both student and teacher participants were asked approximately identical questions in order to com-pare their views and beliefs regarding teacher feedback. The interviews were conducted to find out specific information on the teacher and student attitudes and preferences towards the practices of giving and receiving feedback. In addition, the interview was useful as a cross-reference and to clarify the responses obtained from the questionnaire.

Results and Discussion Teacher and Student Opinions about Teacher Feedback This section discusses teacher attitudes towards teacher feedback. Figure 1 shows the data collected from teacher and student questionnaires.

Figure 1. Teacher and Student Attitudes towards Teacher Feedback




The data in Figure 1 illustrate that a high majority of teachers and students believed that teacher feedback was either ‘very important’ and ‘impor-tant’. The teacher questionnaires indicated that 95% of teachers believed that teacher feedback is ‘important’ (55%) and ‘very important’ (40%). Similarly, the data from the student questionnaires indicate that 93% of the students believed that teacher feedback was either ‘important’ (49%) or ‘very important’ (44%). The interview data also lean towards the importance of teacher feedback. All of the students and teachers interviewed agreed that teacher feedback, to some extent, was very important in improving student writ-ings. The following were some reasons mentioned by the participants for favouring teacher feedback: (a) Teachers have higher linguistic competence in English The most common reason for preferring teacher feedback is the opinion that teachers have much higher language competence than the students. This can be represented from TI 3’s comments when responding to the question ‘Do you think teacher feedback is important?’

…I think it is very difficult for student to improve their written English if they don’t have a good teacher feedback. I don’t think just by reading the newspaper… I don’t think that will help you… I don’t think it is an effective way to improve your English…and then, it might help a little bit. But if it comes to your own writing I think…we need…peer feed-back or teacher feedback… But there has to be someone who has a higher level than you…and that’s why I think peer feedback is useful but teacher feedback is more… It [teacher feedback] can be more useful because you assume teacher has a better grasp of grammar, better grasp of word choice…but it does depend on the teacher.

TI 3’s remark indicates a strong opinion of the crucial role of teacher feedback in improving the student writing. She thought teacher feedback is most useful because of the assumption that teachers have better a grasp of grammar and word choice. A similar idea was also seen from TI 4 and TI 5. Underlying this opinion is the view of the importance of form (or linguistic competence) in the development of writing. Out of the 21 students interviewed, 7 expressed similar views. Yet, not all students interviewed were certain that teacher feedback on grammar is trustworthy. During the interview sessions, SI 1 and SI 21 stated that they did not follow teacher feedback on grammar blindly. Yet, they provided different reasons for this.




For SI 1, he did not follow teacher feedback because based on his experience, teachers still made mistakes in grammar. Later in the interview, I learned that by teachers, he meant local teachers. He believed the feedback from native-speaking English teachers was more reliable than feedback from the non-native speakers. He assumed that due to their nativeness, native teachers were better in giving feedback in ‘all aspects of English’. SI 1’s view were shared by other students as illustrated by the follow-ing comments taken from the questionnaires:

I very much prefer to have native speakers to correct my writing. I believe in their ability more than the non-native since English is their language (SQ 26).

Not only do native speakers have excellent knowledge in English but they also know the correct way in the use of vocabulary… (SQ 88).

When a non-native teacher corrected my paper and then, when I give it to a native speaker, I found there are many mistakes haven’t been cor-rected by my non-native teacher before. Native speaker teachers know how to make a writing flows naturally, it is their language anyway (SQ 95).

Regardless of the claim that English should be ‘everybody’s language’ as it is the current global language, the teacher and student participants continued to believe that English is a native-speaker’s language. (b) Teacher feedback provides security for the [poor] students The second assumption for considering teacher feedback as the most essen-tial is the opinion that teacher feedback provides security for the students. This is expressed by TQ 5. She was sure that students, especially the weaker ones, might be embarrassed to have their writing corrected by their friends. To some extent, her opinion shows an awareness of the concept of ‘face’2 in Asian countries. In collectivist countries such as Indonesia, it is assumed that ‘face’ is considered as the primary value (Cutting 2001). Surprisingly, TQ 5’s belief is indeed contradictory to what the stu-dents felt. SI 10, categorized as a poor writer, did not see peer feedback as face threatening. In fact, he thought peer feedback has helped him in a way that teacher feedback did not. During the interview, SI 10 explained that when teacher feedback was confusing, he always found a friend to clarify the teacher feedback. He did not mention the concern brought up by TQ 5 despite the fact that he was a poor student.




Similar to SI 10, SI 17 felt that it was peer feedback which provided security not teacher feedback. As she said during the interview:

…when I received teacher feedback, I felt a little bit stressed out…like ‘digurui’ (patronizing). I preferred peer feedback because I could feel more relaxed…like chatting. During the consultation session with my lecturer, I always felt they were judging me…especially if I made stupid mistakes like grammatical mistakes that I should not have made. I felt embarrassed but I never felt like that when my friends gave me feed-back… (SI 17, my translation).

Similar to SI 10, she also has friends who often helped her in her writing. This is because teacher feedback made her felt dictated to and/or patronized by the teachers. (c) The cultural belief that teachers are the source of knowledge The third reason for preferring teacher feedback, as stated by several students, is the belief about teachers being the source of knowledge. TI 6 and SI 6 offer a critical reason for this. They thought the reason for the assumption that teachers are knowledgeable was mostly cultural. As SI 6 noted during the interview session:

…since childhood, we were used to be guided by our teachers…we tend to follow them…do whatever they say…including following the feed-back they gave. We needed teacher feedback because we were confused if the teacher did not give feedback. We didn’t know where to go. So since we were a child, we were conditioned to just follow. It was cul-tural… (SI 6, my translation).

SI 6’s comment indicates that student trust in teacher feedback might stem from their cultural upbringing. She explained that since childhood, she had been conditioned to follow teachers. Her idea is shared by TI 6 who added that, in Indonesia, students were not conditioned to evaluate and/or criticize sources. They took it for granted that information from teachers was always right. According to TI 6, this belief has greatly affected the students’ high adherence to teacher feedback. (d) Teachers control grades The fourth reason students preferred teacher feedback was that they were aware of the control teachers have over their grades. As written by SQ 3, SQ 8, and SQ 80 in the questionnaire:

..because whenever I didn’t revise according to the teacher feedback, I got a D (SQ 3).




…because the teacher gave us the grade so we played safe (SQ 8).

Usually what the teacher said was the correct one and the grade for writing was very subjective (depended very much on each individual teacher) so it was very important to know what the teacher wants from our writing. For me, their feedback is what they want. To get an A, just follow what they want (SQ 80).

The interview data from SI 4, SI 5, SI 7, SI 17, SI 18, and SI 19 also echo similar opinions. Another interesting case was encountered by SI 5. She reflected her experience when she was taking Writing 3 course. In fact, she did not want to follow the teacher feedback but, then, she assumed she would get a low grade for not following teacher feedback. Therefore, she changed her written expression ‘use your own track’ to conform with the teacher response ‘use your own way’. As she bluntly explained:

…Once in Writing 3, I wanted to use figurative language but the teacher did not understand what I meant. At that time, I used ‘use your own track’ what I actually meant was ‘use your own way’. I wanted to say if you went to F building, you could use many ways. One way, that I sug-gested, was this little path across the football field. When I write ‘use your own track’ my teacher underlined it with a wriggle line. She said it was not clear. We [native speakers] never used it. Then I thought, isn’t figurative language supposed to be unclear?… But in the final draft, I used her feedback anyway. I was sure if I kept on using ‘my own track’ I would get a low grade… (SI 5, my translation).

The questionnaire and interview data mark student awareness of the unequal power distribution among student and teacher. Students are well aware that it is the teacher who controls the grade. They felt that if they did not follow the teacher feedback, teachers might give them low grades. This finding is indeed worrying as it does indicate that students are primarily interested in the grade when revising. Students are more con-cerned with becoming correctors of mistakes pointed out by the teacher rather than writers trying to communicate with their readers. The data in this study reaffirms previous studies conducted by Thompson (1994). He found that students wanted teacher responses that would help them get better grades. Student Feelings towards Teacher Feedback This section deals with the extent to which teacher feedback influences students’ feelings and emotional states. Figure 2 gives a visual representa-tion of the data collected from the student questionnaires.3




75%

25%

39%

3% 3% 1%0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

Excited Discouraged Confused Irritated Disappointed Stressed

Figure 2. Student Feelings towards Teacher Feedback

In descending order of frequency, the majority of the student respon-dent (75%) felt excited, followed by ‘confused’ (39%), discouraged (25%), irritated (3%), disappointed (3%) and stressed (1%). The students wrote three reasons in the questionnaires for feeling ‘excited’ about teacher feed-back. First, teacher feedback helped students to be aware of their mistakes. Second, teacher feedback gave direction during the revising process. Finally, teacher feedback provided students with an idea of what their instructors expected from them. Surprisingly, the interview data reveal a slightly different picture. Among the 21 students interviewed, only 2 students (9.5%) stated that they felt ‘excited’ when receiving teacher feedback. The remaining inter-view respondents (90.5%) admitted that their feelings very much depended on the amount of teacher feedback generated from their drafts. If students received ‘too much’ feedback, then, they would feel ‘annoyed’ and dis-couraged to continue writing. In contrast, if the teacher gave little feed-back, students would felt ‘happy’ and ‘motivated’ to revise their writing for less feedback meant fewer mistakes. Their remarks show how the teacher feedback greatly determines students’ emotional states. However, from the interview data it can be learned that the perception of ‘too much feedback’ is quite complex as it differs from one student to another.




For SI 18, teachers gave ‘too much feedback’ if their feedback was more than the students’ writing. In fact, she has experienced this when joining one of the earlier writing classes. This practice made her feel ‘help-less’, ‘disappointed’, ‘sad’ and ‘discouraged’. Similar feelings and experi-ences were felt by SI 17 and SI 19. For SI 16, teachers gave ‘too much feedback’ when they crossed out almost every word and/or the whole paragraph in a piece of writing. Although she realized that her writing may need fixing, she thought teachers should try not to cross everything or even most of the parts in student writing As inferred from Bandura (1986), such practice might lower student self-efficacy.4 Bandura (1986) suggests that when teacher feedback leads to student lower self-efficacy, students would not make optimal use of the feedback. Student Stated Difficulties with Teacher Feedback As mentioned in the previous section, most of the students interviewed did not feel particularly excited when receiving teacher feedback because they experienced difficulties in understanding it. In fact the data from the questionnaire show that 91% of the students ‘sometimes’ have difficulty in understanding teacher feedback. The following are some areas which students found most troublesome in teacher feedback, summarized from the open-ended items in the ques-tionnaire and the interview: (a) The coding The interview data show that students encountered difficulties in reacting to the feedback. Although codes did help to point out the problematic parts of students’ writings, they did not facilitate the revising process. This was experienced by SI 17. He did not know how to improve his writing although the teacher has underlined the parts need revising. A similar problem was put forward by SQ 17, SQ 47 and SI 8. Their remarks indi-cate that instead of identifying mistakes, it would be better if teachers could justify their feedback through oral feedback. (b) General feedback SI 8, SI 12 and SI 13 stated that written feedback such as ‘many mistakes on grammar’, ‘revise your ideas’, ‘add more information’, ‘develop the idea’ and ‘revise’ were not helpful since they were very general. A similar problem was expressed by SI 10, SI 16 and SI 18.




Students’ preference for specific teacher feedback is indeed supported by Ziv’s study (1984 cited in Wiltse 2000). He found that students responded favourably to teacher comments that were explicit, offering specific suggestions on how to correct writing errors. He explains that comments such as ‘rephrase this sentence’ did not result in a better second draft because students did not understand how to rephrase and what to rephrase. When comparing student responses with those of the teachers, the data indicate contradicting views. During the interview, TI 7 explained that if there were too many errors in the students’ writing, she just wrote ‘many grammatical errors’ or ‘a lot of grammatical errors’ because she expected her students to find the errors themselves. When I asked further how the students responded to that feedback. She answered:

…if I just give general comments like ‘many grammatical errors’, some diligent students will check their writing, check the sentences and I can see they revise the sentences but some lazy students just ignore the sentences which I don’t give any correction symbol.

She was aware that general comments may not work well with poor students as with diligent students. Based on her experiences, only diligent students revised their writing despite the general feedback their teachers gave them. They even revised parts of their writing not specifically indi-cated by teacher feedback. Wiltse (2000) might provide a useful explanation for this. He stated that revising entails taking a risk. Thus, many students will not take the risk of changing anything not commented on by the teacher even if they sense that revision is needed. The fact that revision entails risk is very much felt by SQ 84:

Sometimes teachers asked me to add more information but they did not tell me what the information should be. As a result, in the revision, it became another mistake that should be revised in later drafts (SQ 84).

She noted that if the teacher feedback was not explicit, the feedback would become ‘another mistake’ that she should revise in later drafts. Another student, SI 3, confessed that she did not revise the writing that her teacher did not code for fear of making a new error. With regard to this, Wiltse (2000) further suggests the need for classroom activities to be designed to help students overcome their apprehension about revising. Student preference of specific teacher feedback is realized by TI 8. As she expressed during the interview session:




… If the feedback is very specific, it is useful. It means the students know exactly what they have to do, but if the feedback is general, for instance, ‘please consider the content, it is not logical’ or we just give a…we just mark the wrong grammatical sentences sometimes the stu-dents could not know…they could not know what to do with the underlined phrase or words so they still repeat the same mistakes.

TI 8 pointed out that feedback should be directive, telling students what they needed to do to improve their writing, otherwise students would keep on repeating similar mistakes in later drafts. However, she further stated that this attempt was not without its draw-backs. When asked if she always attempted to be specific in giving feed-back, she answered:

Yes but that would be time-consuming especially when it is related to language so usually I try to be specific as long as their mistakes are limited to content but then with language, usually in writing 4, stu-dents had to write 3 papers. The first paper I try to be specific maybe I gave examples how to combine sentences, how to combine simple sentences…

From her remarks it shows that while giving specific feedback is effec-tive and preferable, it is very time consuming. In the context of the study, the writing class consisted of 20–25 students. In each writing class, stu-dents are normally expected to write three kinds of writing products and for one writing product, students need to write, at least, a first draft and a final draft. By taking into account the time constraints in providing specific feed-back, TI 6 shared her experience of how to overcome this dilemma. As she described her feedback strategy:

So in the last writing class, I gave a specific feedback to some of the students’ work. I noticed students learn from mistakes. I mean I wrote the feedback using an AVA showing the parts that were wrong in students’ writing. I also pointed out the parts that were already correct using an OHP transparency so they [the students] can really see why it was wrong and how to correct them. So students can develop a skill on how to revise their writing. Apparently they learn a lot and I felt students improve a lot. So, all their grades were good.

TI 6 has developed a feedback strategy that she found to be effective and time-efficient. Instead of attempting to give specific feedback to every student in the class, she just picked some of student works and pinpointed the parts that were already good and the ones that needed improvement.




Furthermore, her strategy highlights an important aspect of teacher feed-back. It shows that teacher feedback needs to be complemented with training the students in revision strategies. By doing so, students know what their teachers expect them to do in the revision process. (c) Teacher feedback on content From the interview, it could be learnt that some students found difficulties with teacher feedback on content. This is particularly because teacher feed-back on content is difficult to follow. As SI 13 said,

I would prefer teacher gave more feedback on grammar like punctuation or diction. Similar with Joko [SI12], I don’t like feedback on content. I did not know how to revise it…where to start… I needed to think from scratch again…so I needed to change the whole idea. This does not happen with feedback on grammar. I just changed the grammar, for example to make it past or present…just like that and I did not need to change my idea from the start (SI 13, my translation).

SI 13’s difficulty in following teacher feedback on content was also felt by SI 8 and SI 20:

[teacher feedback on content]…sometimes confusing. Like…if we had made an outline and then we needed to change it because the teacher disagreed with it… I am confused… I have to think again…how… I did not know how to change the outline…but I like feedback on gram-mar…sentence structure…it’s not confusing in fact, it helps… (SI 8).

…we understood teacher feedback on content. But the difficulty is when it came to revising our writing…it’s difficult. If they asked us to change the content…we understand but we don’t know how to do that…how should we revise our draft…that’s the most difficult part (SI 20).

The comments represented by SI 8, SI 13 and SI 20 were also experi-enced by SI 12, SI 16, and SI 21. The dislike towards feedback on content is not because they did not understand the comments but it has more to do with how to react to the feedback. As pointed out by some students in the interview, teacher feedback on content simply points out students’ prob-lems but does not indicate how to revise the writing. (d) The use of complex language when giving feedback The fourth problem is brought up by the students related to the language in giving feedback. SI 1 and SI 16 thought that it would be better if teachers used easy language when delivering their feedback. Both of them experi-enced difficulty in teachers’ use of unfamiliar terms.




This finding is in line with Robb, Ross and Shortreed (1986 cited in Reesor 2002) study. They found that the extent to which students can make use of feedback is largely related to a learner’s level of L2 acquisi-tion. Thus, Reesor (2002) concludes that the identification of some gram-matical errors that correspond with student current acquisition level may have a positive effect on student writing, but the identification of errors beyond the student’s current acquisition level will not. Similar suggestions were put forward by Williams (1997) and Ryoo (2004). Therefore, teachers should be careful not to concentrate too heavily on errors in form beyond student present acquisition level. If teachers re-sponded to errors at a level beyond a learner’s level of acquisition, they may risk not only wasting much of their own time, but also confusing students. Consequently, the feedback is not effective since students cannot make optimal use of it. (e) Teacher feedback that contradicts student ideas During the interview session, S7, S9, S11, SI 16 and SI 19 mentioned that teacher feedback becomes troublesome when it does not suit the student ideas. As the following opinions show:

…usually feedback on ideas. When I wanted to write my own experi-ence in one of the writing classes, the teacher said it needed to be like this…so that it would be more coherent…but my experience was not like that. In this condition, usually I just followed teacher feedback… what the teacher wanted (SI 17, my translation).

…teacher feedback sometimes was confusing when they gave feedback on ideas. During the outlining, I wanted the idea to be like this but this did not correspond with teacher’s suggestion. At that time I was so confused how to change it. Once I changed my topic three times just because my idea was different from the teacher’s…so what I wanted did not correspond with what the teacher wanted… (SI 9, my translation).

When I have an argument…this argument actually was much related with the ideas in the paragraphs that followed. But because teacher gave suggestion to change the argument, it ruined the ideas in the next para-graphs….it confused my own line of thought (SI 16, my translation).

These students expressed their difficulties in following teacher feed-back if the feedback did not correspond to their previous ideas. SI 11 and SI 16 went even further saying that when this happens, they did not know how to continue the writing and became confused since they needed to change their ideas to comply with the teacher comments.




Conclusion

Similar to the teachers, the data from the questionnaire and interview illustrate that the majority of students strongly believed that teacher feed-back is of utmost importance to improve students’ writing. This is because many times, though not always, teachers are considered to be more com-petent in terms of language and knowledge. In addition, they are believed to be more experienced in writing and providing feedback, the source of knowledge and the ones who control grades. Because of this strong belief, students considered teacher feedback as more ‘qualified’, ‘experienced’ ‘accurate’, ‘valid’, ‘reliable’ and ‘trustworthy’. Yet, it is important to point out that not all students agree with this, particularly those who have experi-enced being given inappropriate teacher feedback. With regard to stu-dents’ emotional states, the data from the questionnaire indicates that the majority of the students felt ‘excited’ when receiving teacher feedback. However, the interview data provide a different result. Of the 30 students interviewed, 28 (93%) admitted that the amount of teacher feedback largely influenced their feelings. While too much feedback would make the students depressed, little feedback was considered more motivating, as for the students, it indicated fewer mistakes.

REFERENCES Bandura, A. 1986 Social Foundations of Thoughts and Actions: A Social Cognitive Theory

(Englewoods Cliff, NJ: Prentice Hall). Coffin, C., M.J. Curray, S. Goodman, A. Hewings, T.M. Lilis, and J. Swan 2003 Teaching Academic Writing: A Toolkit for Higher Education (New York:

Routledge). Cutting, J. 2001 Pragmatics and Discourse: A Resource Book for Students (London:

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Teacher 5(3): 242-55. Robb, T., S. Ross, and I. Shortreed 1986 ‘Salience of Feedback on Error and its Effect on EFL Writing Quality’,

TESOL Quarterly 20: 83-95. Ryoo, Mi-Lim 2004 ‘The Effects of Teacher Feedback on EFL Students’ Writing in a Korean

University Class’, The Journal of ASIA TEFL 1(1): 115-30.




Thompson, T. 1994. Giving Them What They Want: Student Views of Revision (East Lansing, MI:

National Center for Research on Teacher Learning). Williams, S.E. 1997 Teachers’ Written Comments and Students’ Responses: A Socially Con-

structed Interaction (East Lansing, MI: National Center for Research on Teacher Learning).

Wiltse, E.M. 2000 ‘The Effects of Motivation and Anxiety on College Students’ Use of Instruc-

tor Comments’ (Unpublished Doctorate Dissertation, Wyoming, The Univer-sity of Wyoming).

Ziv, N.D. 1982 What She Thought I Said: How Students Misperceive Written Comments (East

Lansing, MI: National Center for Research on Teacher Learning).

NOTES 1. In the English Department, one academic year consists of three trimesters. One trimester equals to four months. 2. Cutting (2002) defines ‘face’ as a person’s public image. 3. See Appendix B: Student Questionnaire, question number 6. 4. Self-efficacy is people’s judgements of students abilities in organizing and executing courses of action required to attain a particular type of performances (Bandura 1986).



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Teacher and Student Attitudes toward Teacher Feedback