Language Teaching Research 4,1 (2000); pp.

33–54

ESL writers and feedback: giving

more autonomy to students
Fiona Hyland Open University of Hong Kong

Using data from a qualitative study into the effects of feedback on ESL
writers, this paper looks at the peer and teacher feedback offered to
individual writers. The paper suggests that teachers sometimes also
override student concerns and decisions on use of feedback, even when
peer feedback, which appears to allow for more student participation
in the feedback process is involved. It focuses on the cases of two
students, whose use of feedback and interactions with their teachers
raise questions relating to the ownership of their writing and revision
processes. It is sugggested that teacher interventions may lead to
students relinquishing control of their writing and revision processes, as
well as their written products. The paper suggests that in some
circumstances, teachers should encourage students to take more
responsibility for their own writing, by allowing them to make their own
decisions about their use and sources of feedback.

I Introduction
The nature and source of feedback on ESL student writing can
vary widely. With developments in writing research and pedagogy,
different types of feedback which allow for more student
participation, such as peer feedback and feedback through writing
conferences, are now more widely used. There is also an increased
awareness of the social and political implications of giving
feedback. This paper examines episodes which demonstrate that
teachers sometimes override student decisions on use of feedback,
even when peer feedback, which appears to allow for more student
participation, is involved. Data from a qualitative, longitudinal
study into the effects of feedback on ESL writers will be used to
illustrate this. After examining peer feedback interactions in two

Address for correspondence: Fiona Hyland, Open University of Hong Kong, 30 Good
Shepherd Street, Ho Man Tin, Kowloon, Hong Kong.

© Arnold 2000 1362–1688(00)[Link]

34 ESL writers and feedback

ESL writing classes, the paper will discuss the cases of two students
whose use of feedback and interactions with their teachers raised
questions relating to the ownership of their writing and revision
processes.

II Background
The role of feedback on writing involves complex issues and needs
to be considered within the total context in which the feedback is
given. Traditional student/teacher relationships are unequal in
terms of the distribution of power. Students tend to accept the
authority of the teacher, while the teachers have the authority of
their institution behind them, with its power to pass or fail the
student. Comments on writing are read by the students within the
context of an implicit understanding of this relationship. Teachers
also have an ambiguous role, since they are often called on to be
both facilitator and evaluator and to act as an audience for the
writer (Leki, 1990; Reid, 1994). The responses that most teachers
give try to incorporate these different and often conflicting roles.
In the past 20 years there has been some debate about the
problem of ‘text appropriation’. The topic of ownership of student
texts was widely discussed in L1 writing research (Brannon and
Knoblauch, 1982; Freedman, 1987; Hairston, 1982; Knoblauch and
Brannon, 1984; Onore, 1989; Sommers, 1982; Sperling and
Freedman, 1987), after practitioners questioned the traditional role
of the writing teacher as a controller and authority (Elbow, 1973).
According to Knoblauch and Brannon (1984: 118) writing could be
‘stolen’ from a writer by the teacher’s comments. They argued that
by following directive feedback closely, students do not develop
either their cognitive or their writing skills through their writing,
but merely rewrite texts to reflect their teachers’ preoccupations.
These concerns were transferred to ESL methodology. However,
more recently teachers have questioned the validity of applying
such concepts to ESL writers, since the L1 and L2 writing situations
are quite different. Reid has claimed that in terms of the ESL
writing situation, text appropriation is ‘largely a mythical fear of
ESL writing teachers’ (1994: 275). She has argued that the concept
of text appropriation ignores the importance of the social context,
especially for ESL writers and that appropriation concerns have
 Fiona Hyland 35

resulted in teachers failing to give students the concrete help they

need, because they are confusing intervention with appropriation.
She suggests that to be effective, teachers need to forget
appropriation concerns when giving feedback and concentrate
instead on their roles as ‘cultural informants and as facilitators for
creating the social discourse community in the ESL writing
classroom’ (p. 275).
Reid’s discussion reminds us that writing in a first and second
language are not the same and that teaching practices from one
situation are not necessarily transferable to another. However, to
fully understand the ESL classroom context we do have to consider
the complex relationships which exist within it in terms of power
and authority. The teacher’s authority may have a special potency
for ESL students who often lack confidence in their ability to
express themselves in their second language and may also be facing
induction into a new culture and a new discourse community.
Bartholomae (1986: 12) has discussed ‘the difficult and often
violent accommodations that occur when students locate
themselves in a discourse that is not “naturally” or immediately
theirs’. In these circumstances, he argues, learning ‘becomes more
of a matter of imitation or parody than a matter of invention or
discovery’.
Peer feedback is seen as a way of giving more control to students
since it allows them to make active decisions about whether or not
to use their peers’ comments as opposed to a passive reliance on
teachers’ feedback (Mendonca and Johnson, 1994; Mittan, 1989).
The literature claims many positive effects for peer feedback.
Freedman and Sperling (1985) and Mittan (1989) consider that
peer response can be more authentic and honest than teacher
response. Chaudron (1984) suggests that since students’ reviewers
will soon perceive that other students experience the same
difficulties in writing that they do, peer feedback may also lead to
a reduction in writer apprehension and an increase in writer
confidence. It may benefit the revision processes of reviewers as
well as writers, making them less reliant on teacher feedback by
helping them to internalize an audience and a checklist of
evaluative questions to apply to their writing.
However, a question has been posed about the value of this type
of response for ESL writers. A study by Connor and Asenavage
36 ESL writers and feedback

(1994) suggested that peer feedback made only a marginal

difference to student writing. They analysed student revision after
peer feedback and found that very few revisions could be linked
directly to peer comments. Researchers also suggest that cross-
cultural problems may occur since ESL peer groups often include
students from a large variety of cultural and educational
backgrounds. According to Allaei and Connor (1990: 24), ‘conflict
or at the very least, high levels of discomfort may occur in
multicultural collaborative peer response groups’. Nelson and
Murphy (1992, 1993) found that students from different cultures
had different expectations about basic elements of the group
situation such as the roles of the members, the mechanics of the
group and politeness strategies. Thus the classroom reality may
sometimes not match the ideal and deserves further investigation
in longitudinal and naturalistic settings.

III Method
1 Research setting and participants
The data discussed in this paper form part of a larger longitudinal
study which primarily investigated written teacher feedback, but
also examined how such written teacher feedback interacted with
other aspects of the context, including other forms of feedback
such as teacher oral feedback in writing conferences and peer
feedback. I collected data from a full-time English proficiency
programme course (EPP) running for 14 weeks at a university in
New Zealand, preparing ESL students for university study. The
study focused on one class preparing students for undergraduate
courses and one class preparing them for postgraduate studies. Two
teachers working on the EPP took part in the study. Both these
teachers had wide experience of teaching these courses and both
had an interest in writing and teaching writing. Joan taught the
undergraduate class, which will be referred to as class A, and Nadia
taught the postgraduate class, which will be referred to as class B.
Six ESL students (three from each class) participated in the case
study part of the research. These included students of varying
levels of proficiency, from a variety of cultural backgrounds (see
Table 1).
 Fiona Hyland 37

Table 1 Background information on case-study students

Student Age Nationality Education Proficiency level

level

Maho 19 Japanese High school Low intermediate

(undergraduate class)

Seng Hee 20 Korean High school Intermediate

(undergraduate class)

Keith 26 Taiwanese High school Intermediate

(undergraduate class)

Samorn 30+ Thai BA High intermediate/

(postgraduate class) advanced

Liang 30+ Taiwanese BA High intermediate

(postgraduate class)

Zhang Yue 27+ Chinese BA Advanced

(postgraduate class)

2 Data collection
Data were collected throughout the three-month course. Data
collection included questionnaires and interviews, teacher think-
aloud protocols and classroom observations. Written data consisted
of all the writing carried out by the case study students during the
course, including drafts and revised versions of written
assignments, together with teacher and peer written feedback. All
the writing tasks and feedback offered were generated by the
course and no interventions were made.
Both classes had two hours a week of writing workshops, when
the students worked on their writing, consulting their classmates
or their teachers when necessary. Observations were made during
these writing workshops, to obtain information about the context
and the role of peer feedback and oral teacher feedback. As I had
taught on a similar EPP course the previous semester, I also
brought insider knowledge of this teaching situation to the
observer’s role. A respondent validation procedure helped to make
records of observations more accurate and complete. The notes on
observations in class were passed to the teacher concerned, who
was then asked to add any extra details that she felt were relevant
and write notes on any point which she felt had been
misinterpreted or misrepresented. This gave the teachers access to
38 ESL writers and feedback

what was being written about them and gave them the opportunity
to add any extra information.
A questionnaire investigating student perceptions of the purpose
and value of feedback was administered to students in both class
A and class B both at the beginning and end of the course. The
questionnaire included both multiple-choice and open-ended
questions and focused on student attitudes, beliefs, behaviour and
attributes. Students were asked about their previous experiences
of feedback, their feedback preferences and their beliefs about the
helpfulness of various forms of feedback. They were also asked to
report on the actions they took in response to feedback. Questions
on both teacher and peer feedback were included.
Two interviews with each student were carried out at the
beginning and end of the course. These used a series of interview
prompts, but if the students raised other issues during the
interviews, these were also pursued. The interviews provided
information on students’ beliefs and expectations about feedback
at the start of this course and showed how these changed over the
period of the course.
Interviews with the teachers on their feedback practices and
teaching strategies were also carried out. In addition, they
conducted think-aloud protocols as they gave written feedback to
the draft of one piece of writing for each case study subject. They
were asked to select an assignment where they would be giving
feedback on a draft and expecting a revised version of the writing
as part of their normal writing programme. Specific instructions
were then given asking the teachers to try to say aloud everything
they were thinking as they responded to the essay. A retrospective
interview was also conducted with the students within a day of
their revising this draft, to investigate their responses to the written
feedback and their individual revision strategies. Using a series of
oral prompts, students were asked to explain how they revised, the
reasons for their revisions and their reactions to, and
interpretations of the actual comments and corrections on their
papers. They were also asked to evaluate the success of their
revisions.
Teachers and students were given pseudonyms, and feedback
and debriefing procedures were put into place, so that everything
written about the class settings and feedback procedures could be
 Fiona Hyland 39

read and commented on by the teachers before publication. Cohen

and Manion (1994) discuss the need for regular checking and
negotiation of findings during both the data collection and the
writing up of the research. The teachers were kept fully informed
on the procedures, aims and progress of the research, and findings
related to their classes were made available to them for discussion
before publication.

3 Data analysis
An analysis of both the written feedback offered to the case-study
subjects and their subsequent revisions was carried out. Each
written intervention was considered as a separate ‘feedback point’,
and was analysed from the following perspectives: its purpose,
whether it commented on process or product, its focus, the degree
of intervention that it represented, its position in the student text
and the span of text it covered. Revisions carried out to drafts were
also identified and categorized, according to the following criteria:
their focus, level, span, the effect of the revision on text
improvement and the extent of the use made of written teacher
feedback. The revisions and the written teacher feedback were
then compared and cross-referenced to investigate how written
teacher feedback triggered revision and at what level. This analysis
is discussed in more detail in Hyland (1998).
In addition, the field notes made during the workshops were
examined to trace the relationship between oral and written
feedback. The interactions in the workshops were classified into a
number of categories: teacher to whole class, class discussion, group
discussion and individual interactions. The individual interactions
were then examined to see whether they involved student/student
or student/teacher. This gave a fuller picture of the nature of
response in the workshops, including information on the amount
of peer interaction and the degree to which oral feedback from the
teacher or peers was actively sought by the students.
40 ESL writers and feedback

IV Findings
1 The role of peer feedback
Peer feedback sheets are a common practice in the ESL classroom.
Teachers employ them as they believe they help to guide the
students and help them to focus on appropriate aspects of the text.
However, they have been criticized for turning the peer review
exercise into ‘a kind of conspiracy geared less toward
communicating peer to peer than pleasing a teacher’ (Dipardo and
Freedman, 1988: 144). Knoblauch and Brannon (1984) also suggest
that if the focus of the peer feedback is dictated by the teacher,
this makes it more mechanical and less interesting for the students.
Peer feedback sheets were used by both classes in this study, but
to varying degrees. Joan was ambivalent about the usefulness of
peer feedback, seeing it as a low priority and therefore class A only
used peer feedback sheets once. On the other hand, class B
completed them for all the writing they did. Nadia also asked
students to include their peer feedback sheets when handing in
their drafts and often referred to the comments on them when
giving her own written feedback. However, the questionnaire
revealed that this had a negative rather than positive effect, since
attitudes towards the helpfulnesss of peer feedback in class A
became more positive, while in class B attitudes generally became
more negative. In class A, at the beginning of the course, only one
student rated peer feedback as very helpful, while at the end of
the course, four ranked it as very helpful. In class B three students
initially thought that it would be very helpful, but at the end of
the course only one ranked it as very helpful (see Table 2).
Data from the observations and interviews as well as the
questionnaires suggested that students did not take much interest

Table 2 Student attitudes towards the helpfulness of peer feedback for both
classes (end-of-course figures in brackets)

Helpfulness of peer feedback Class A Class B

Very helpful 1 (4) 3 (1)

Helpful 4 (3) 4 (2)
Sometimes helpful 6 (4) 6 (9)
Not helpful at all 1 (1) 0 (1)

Total 12 (12) 13 (13)

 Fiona Hyland 41

in filling the peer response sheets in. In class B one case-study

subject, Liang suggested that most students only did them because
they had to. Liang found that her classmates didn’t answer all the
questions and did not attempt to say what the strengths and
weaknesses of the essay were, or to tell her which paragraphs were
not clear:
Interviewer Did you make any use of your peer feedback?
Liang Oh this one nothing special. [Laughs] Yeah.
Interviewer Because they’ve really said?
Liang Yes, yes, yes. [Laughs]
Interviewer [Reading] ‘All are good.’
(Retrospective interview)

Under all the headings in the peer response sheet Liang’s peer
had simply written ‘yes’ and ignored the blank lines left for further
comments. For example: ‘Does the essay have a clear introduction?
– Yes.’ Liang felt that this type of feedback was of little help.
However, she felt that peer consultations and support during the
writing process might be more useful:
I think that peer feedback is yeah. Um maybe before the first draft I get some
ideas I can talk with the other classmates, talk about the ideas. Maybe they
have more ideas than me.
(Retrospective interview)

When giving peer feedback, Liang tried to make it the kind of

constructive feedback she would have liked to receive herself. She
tried to give more detailed comments and tell her classmates when
she found their writing hard to understand. She said she was ‘happy
to do that, but it depends on if the other people accept or not’,
suggesting that she was aware of the cultural problems involved in
critically examining a peer’s work. Other case-study students also
felt that there were cultural problems to giving negative feedback.
Zhang, another student in class B, who actively sought peer
feedback on his oral presentation, was disappointed by the
response:
I just given a presentation and just now I asked Chan for some comments for
my presentation. Well, he said ‘oh it’s all right’. Nothing important, nothing
useful. Maybe he didn’t like to comment. Especially for Chinese, for Chinese
people you know, they seldom comment on some other people’s work. . . . I
think it’s not good. I want to know more about how I done.
42 ESL writers and feedback

To counter this problem, another student, Samorn, in her retro-

spective interview, described how she had written a comment on
her peer feedback sheet before handing it to her peer responder,
to relax her and make her feel at ease with the role of critic:
[Reading her own comments on peer cover sheet] ‘Nothing, I am pleased with
nothing.’ [Laughs] I wrote this because I want my friend to feel comfortable
to write every comment that she think that I have a weak point.

Originally one intention of this study was to examine the written

peer feedback in conjunction with the written teacher feedback to
see if the two sources were focusing on similar aspects and to
compare the effects they had on student writing. However, it soon
became clear that the focus of the written peer response was
largely teacher selected. Student comments in interviews and on
their questionnaires showed that they felt that it was an obligation
and took very little trouble over it. In many cases the written peer
feedback was also so neutral and non-specific that it was
impossible to link it to any revisions. Overall, then, the formal
written peer feedback appeared to play a marginal role in these
two classes.

2 Emergence of a peer support mechanism

Dipardo and Freedman (1988) suggest that encouraging
spontaneous peer talk during the writing process is a better
strategy than using formalized peer feedback sheets, and in fact
the observations in the writing workshops suggested that such peer
talk had an important role to play. The students encouraged,
supported and helped each other, without providing specific
comments on writing products. The atmosphere in the workshops
came across very clearly as ‘a community of status equals’ (Bruffee,
1984: 642), as the following evidence from observation notes in
both classes will show. Most of these interactions did not involve
audience response to completed drafts. Instead, the students turned
to one another for support during the writing process:
Keith turns to Jun and sighs and says ‘big problem’. Jun asks him what the
problem is. Keith says ‘Too much errors’. Jun asks ‘Grammar?’ and Keith
replies ‘Yes grammar’. They look at Keith’s essay together.
(Class A)
 Fiona Hyland 43

Meeta gets up and goes over to Jan. There is no spare seat so she sits on Jan’s
lap and they read Jan’s essay aloud together. Every few sentences, they pause
and talk in Thai. English sentences from the essay are mixed into the
conversation.
(Class B)

Students also sometimes used their peers for help with

understanding task requirements:
Four students are discussing what they have to do. Keith explains to the
others ‘You see this is my first draft, yesterday I checked my essay, now I
will change some ideas and write my second draft.’ Adbul nods. They continue
to discuss the task requirements. Keith says that there are three types of
writing they can do in this course and in the writing workshop, journal writing,
theme writing and assignments. The other three students listen carefully and
nod.
(Class A)

They asked other students for help with language and vocabulary
problems:
Samorn checks her sentence with Mei Ling. ‘So research shows that food
colouring provoke an allergy?’ Mei Ling says ‘induce’. Samorn queries this.
‘Induce an allergy?’ Mei Ling says ‘yes’. Lyn joins in. ‘What is the difference
between provoke and induce? Do they mean the same thing?’ Mei Ling says
that provoke means put forward and induce means cause.
(Class B)

Other peer interactions gave information on issues of genre and

academic conventions. These could be specific points or might deal
with more general ideas:
Kimiko asks about using the phrase ‘in my opinion’ in an academic essay. Van
tells her ‘That’s OK.’
(Class A)
Van and Grace are discussing the need to be specific in writing. Grace is not
sure what this means and Van explains it using the example of what he wants
to learn on this course, in general and specific terms.
(Class B)

These interactions illustrate the presence of a peer support

mechanism functioning in the writing workshop, without the
control or direction of the teacher. By contrast, in terms of the
formal feedback sessions, when providing written guidelines for the
44 ESL writers and feedback

students to follow while they gave feedback, the teacher effectively

‘took over’ the peer feedback, so that the focus was teacher
directed. At this point, the peer response became just another class
task and lost its meaning for many of the students as a
communicative event. Students responded better when they were
not directed and could make decisions about the focus and timing
of the feedback themselves.
If the peer feedback was sometimes overcontrolled by the
teacher, how much autonomy were students granted in making
decisions about the use of feedback generally? Two of the case
study students showed a great deal of independence regarding
decisions on feedback use. One case involved choice regarding the
source and use of peer feedback and the other involved the way
that feedback from the teacher was integrated into the student’s
learning process. In both these cases, the students’ decisions led to
a conflict with the teacher, with the teacher wanting more control
of the feedback situation. These two situations will now be
examined in some detail to illustrate the complexity of the
feedback situation in terms of the issues of student autonomy and
teacher control.

3 Controlling the feedback process: Liang and Nadia

One important point about peer feedback is that it is not
necessarily confined to the classroom. In both classes examined in
this study students reported independently seeking the advice and
guidance of others outside the classroom. Two students, Liang and
Keith, reported using their spouses (both L2 speakers), while two
others, reported using flatmates or other ESL students. Another
student also showed her writing to a native speaker student, her
boyfriend. These peer responders were selected by the students
because they were at a higher level of proficiency. However, in
terms of status they were equal and close and therefore the
relationship was a relaxed and friendly one in which constructive
criticism could be freely given, and feedback and correction could
be supplemented by detailed discussion.
Liang was a mature student in class B (see Table 1). She was
from Taiwan and had considerable work experience as a librarian.
Her husband was an academic in Taiwan, whose English language
 Fiona Hyland 45

skills were much better than hers. In her retrospective interview

Liang described how she made use of her husband to help her with
her drafts. She gave each draft to her husband to look at and he
corrected the grammar and also gave her some suggestions about
the comprehensibility of her writing:
I think the most important feedback from my husband is when I hand him
the essay and ask him to correct that, also to correct grammar and vocabulary.
But I think the more important thing he can tell me which paragraph he don’t
understand what I mean, what I’m talking about. He always ask me ‘Why you
say that? I don’t understand what you speaking or why you use this sentence,
can not understand the meaning.’ So when he asks the question I will think
about what can I make it clear?

Nadia became suspicious of the very accurate language of

Liang’s writing and asked her on her draft of her first assignment:
‘Did you get some help with the editing?’ After discussing Liang’s
use of her husband, she asked her to submit drafts without
consulting him in the future. Liang completely disagreed with this
and used her writing journal as a means of communicating her
disagreement:
I got the long essay yesterday. There were some mistakes and some sentences
were not clear. I didn’t ask my husband to revise the first draft, so there were
lots of grammar mistakes. When I finish an essay, I usually give it to my
husband. My husband corrects my mistakes and points out which sentence is
not clear. I think it is good for me to learn how to write a correct essay.
Sometimes I have good ideas, but I can not explain very well in English. My
husband can give me advices to improve my writing. I always discuss some
sentences with my husband and he teaches me grammar. In this way, I think
I can improve my English ability. I like this kind of feedback. I can have more
ideas about my essay during the discussion.
(Journal entry)

Nadia responded to this extract with the following comment: ‘This

is true – specially when you do university assignments next year.
But now in terms of English learning, sometimes it’s more
important to try and learn from your own mistakes and self
correct.’
Liang was not a confrontational student and therefore she
followed Nadia’s instructions. In her first interview she expressed
the opinion that ‘the teacher always is right’. However, remarks
made off-tape after her final interview suggest that she did not
46 ESL writers and feedback

agree that it was a better way to learn and this may have affected
the student/teacher relationship.
One interesting aspect of this dialogue is the separation that
Nadia made between writing as an English learner and writing in
an academic environment. She suggested that when Liang was
actually working in the academic context, all the resources she had
(including her husband) would be legitimate tools for the
completion of academic tasks. However, at the present she gave
priority to her situation as a second language learner. Liang was
more focused on her future situation as an MA student and this
may have contributed to this conflict.
The analysis of the teacher feedback and student revisions
indicates that Nadia was quite right in assuming that Liang’s very
accurate drafts were ‘cleaned up’ by her husband. In her later
drafts (after she had been asked not to use her husband’s
feedback) there were more revisions overall. For example, in her
first assignment she made 42 revisions, 29 of which could be
linked to written teacher feedback. In her later assignment she
made 109 revisions, of which 55 could be linked to written teacher
feedback.
The analysis of the span of revisions on her two major
assignments is shown in Table 3. On her second assignment (2BA2)
there was a greater percentage of word-level revisions. Many of
these were surface-level revisions concerning formal language
features. In the first major assignment there were a total of 27
surface-level revisions, whereas on the second assignment (of
similar length), there were 103 such changes. Many of these
revisions dealing with language accuracy might also have been
needed in the first assignment. However, if as Nadia suspected,
Liang was using her husband mainly as a proofreader, these would
already have been corrected before the draft reached the teacher
and would not have shown on the analysis.

Table 3 Span of text covered by Liang’s revisions in percentages (for each

assignment)

Assign Global Multi- Sentence Clause Phrase Word Graphic Total

sentence

2BA1 0 (0) 14 (15) 21 (8) 7 (8) 27 (8) 24 (46) 7 (15) 100%

2BA2 0 (0) 0 (2) 16 (15) 5 (12) 18 (25) 60 (48) 1 (0) 100%
 Fiona Hyland 47

This episode illustrates the kind of difficulties that teachers

and students face in the feedback situation. In this case, Nadia
felt that Liang was misusing peer feedback by an overreliance on
her husband’s help. Liang believed that this was not the case, that
her husband’s help was strongly developmental and beneficial to
her as a writer. Her own feelings were that her husband was
improving her writing process, her grammar, and her revision
strategies. For Liang, the interaction with her husband was a
‘collaborative endeavour’ (Aljaafreh and Lantolf, 1994: 480).
Liang viewed her drafts as part of the writing process, but
Nadia saw them as products, whose ownership had to be
confined to the student writer. Liang could not see why it was
unacceptable for her husband to give her the same kind of
feedback as her teacher gave her, but with more opportunities for
relaxed face-to-face interaction. Her stance is supported by
Vygotskyan theory which suggests that communicative
collaboration with more skilled peers can lead to the development
of the ability to solve problems independently (De Guerrero and
Villamil, 1994).
More communication and discussion on this issue was obviously
needed, but because Liang was reluctant to openly oppose her
teacher, this did not take place. Nadia did not feel that there was
a problem, but Liang felt cheated of an important learning
resource. In this case freedom for deciding on the appropriate
source of feedback was removed from the student. This resulted in
some resentment and remained an unresolved issue to the end of
the course.

4 Taking risks and playing safe: Keith and Joan

Another conflict regarding the use of feedback was noted in class
A between Keith, a 21-year-old student from Taiwan (see Table 1),
and his teacher, Joan. Keith was an active and enthusiastic
language learner who was deeply concerned with the creative
aspects of writing. He strongly believed in the potential of
feedback to help him develop his writing abilities and was
determined to use all the feedback he received. This resulted in a
misunderstanding, where Keith was trying to expand both his
linguistic knowledge and his writing through experimentation with
48 ESL writers and feedback

new vocabulary and phrases, whilst Joan was urging him to be

more restrictive.
Keith gave vocabulary development as one of his main aims on
this course, and feedback on vocabulary issues was consistently
given throughout the course by Joan, who focused on Keith’s
inappropriate and inaccurate lexical choices in nearly every piece
of writing he did, underlining problem words and highlighting this
area in her summary comments:
Some words are remembered wrongly (e.g., authority? advantingly?)
You need to be more careful when you introduce new words.
You sometimes try to use idiomatic phrases, but not correctly. Do you
check these in a monolingual dictionary before using them? My advice would
be to check their use or avoid using them. They can make it hard to
understand.
You have made good attempts to use new vocabulary, but you need to be
more careful with this.
You really need to check the meaning of words (especially uncommon words)
that you are using. Do you use a bilingual dictionary? This can often lead to
the selection of inappropriate words.
Try to express yourself with simpler words unless you have time to check
usage of more difficult words.

It may have seemed as if Keith was deliberately ignoring this

feedback, since he persisted in using complex and often
inappropriate vocabulary throughout this course. However, the
retrospective interview suggested that Keith was aware of his
vocabulary problems, but continued to use complex vocabulary,
because this was one of his own learning strategies. He saw the
draft as an ideal place to test out his knowledge of new structures
and words, knowing that he would receive feedback which would
show him whether he could use the new forms.
In this course, I am concentrated to the vocabulary and newspaper read. So
I try to use the new vocabulary. Maybe sometimes I will make mistakes with
wrong way, but I think that’s OK because mistake is necessary.

Keith explained this strategy in some detail in an essay on

language-learning strategies.
Thirdly I will launch more opportunities to practice what I’ve inputed. As it
turned out that more practice will seize what you’ve learnt impressively.
Fourthly, feedback is another significant process, even though mistakes are
inevitable, I still go through the feedback to shape up a correct skeleton and
 Fiona Hyland 49

help me to center on the focuses which the weaknesses exist in my learning

strategies.

Joan was aware of this strategy of Keith’s, as these extracts from

her protocol responding to the draft of his first major assignment
show:
‘To induce’ – he tries to use a word he studied but not quite correctly – induce
someone to do something.
‘We can manifestly perceive’ – oh – he’s trying to use that word –
. . . manifestly perceive – good try but not appropriate – we can clearly
perceive.
‘On the contrary’ – hmm, that’s not a good use of that – difficult to use that
phrase as I said in class.
(Teacher protocol 3A)

Joan and Keith appear to have focused on different objectives.

Keith was developmental in his focus, happy to try out new
vocabulary, feeling comfortable with making mistakes, since he
wanted to test his knowledge and believed that the process of
making mistakes and receiving feedback would alert him to any
problems and help him to learn correct usage:
Interviewer [reading] ‘We can manifestly perceive’
Keith Obviously perceive.
Interviewer So why did you use manifestly?
Keith Just try to use.
Interviewer So what did you do when she underlined manifestly?
Keith Maybe wrong way.
Interviewer How did you change it?
Keith Check this word in dictionary.
(Retrospective interview)
I heard a sentence from radio and then I used it in my conversation
immediately. . . . Making mistakes is helpful for you to learn a language.
(Extract from first essay)

Joan, however, had quite a different focus. She was plainly

disturbed by the effect of Keith’s inaccurate language on the
comprehensibility of his message and so sent him signals through
her feedback to restrict his vocabulary use to words he already
knew, or check vocabulary more thoroughly before submitting
writing to her. Her focus was on the immediate product, while
Keith’s was on his whole language-learning process. The draft for
50 ESL writers and feedback

him was an opportunity to learn through experimentation and

feedback.
In his essay on language learning, Keith stressed that the most
important factors in language learning were to be active and to be
an extrovert. He put this philosophy into practice in his writing, by
not being afraid to take risks and make mistakes. He used the
feedback he got on wrong usage and wrote correct sentences in
his practice book and he felt that he was showing development in
this area, even if his drafts did not show this. Joan however
interpreted this as carelessness. From her point of view, Keith was
taking too many risks and his writing was suffering because of this.
From Keith’s point of view, he was extending his learning through
use and feedback would help him to see how successful this was.

V Conclusions and implications for teachers

The two cases discussed above highlight the need for teachers and
students to communicate on a one to one basis, not just about texts
and writing problems, but also about approaches to writing and
learning and feedback strategies. Clear and full communication is
an essential ingredient for effective feedback. Liang and Keith and
their teachers may not have communicated adequately over the
issue of feedback. Liang felt frustrated at having her decisions
about the nature of feedback she sought overridden by Nadia. Joan
and Keith focused on different objectives; Joan on correctness and
comprehensibility and Keith on the development and extension of
his writing skills through experimentation. Both teachers and
students had good reasons for their stances, but because these
stances were implicit rather than explicit, they were not fully
understood by the two parties involved.
The teachers tended to view student use of feedback as a fairly
passive process, focusing on the immediate products. They treated
the drafts they dealt with as finished pieces, and although their
protocols showed some awareness of individual students and their
specific problems, there was a tendency for them to focus on ‘fixing
up’ the texts in front of them when giving feedback. On a number
of occasions, both in her interview and in her instructions to
students, Nadia suggested that she wanted the students to use her
written feedback to ‘fix up’ their mistakes. Joan doubted that
 Fiona Hyland 51

feedback on grammar could be ‘incremental’, i.e. could be passed

on to future pieces of writing.
The student views were more developmental and more focused
on the whole process of learning to write than those of the
teachers. From the student perspective, feedback on grammar was
not a simple question of error correction or proofreading, it also
had potential for enhancing their learning. Teachers may
sometimes need to remind themselves that drafts are
developmental and do not represent a finished product, but are a
part of the writing process. Teachers sometimes accuse L2 students
of having limited ideas on what revision is all about, but these
episodes do not support this, and suggest that this view does not
give students enough credit for initiative and active participation
in their development. Future research could investigate this
mismatch between student and teacher views of feedback’s
potential for development.
The place of written peer feedback in this study was marginal
and students did not appear to benefit much from their peers’
formal written responses. The imposition of a teacher focus on the
peer feedback had a negative effect in terms of the commitment
shown by the responders and in terms of the value placed on the
response by the writers.
The student attitudes to the teacher-directed peer feedback
contrasted quite clearly with their attitudes to the informal peer
response situations in the workshops, where they were in control.
The observations of the writing workshops, responses given in the
questionnaires, and the discussions in the interviews showed that
the students valued the presence of their peers in the workshops
for the support they provided at various stages of the writing
process, in an informal manner. Teachers conscientiously devise
structured peer feedback sheets, but may be unaware of their
possible negative effects. They can take away the spontaneity from
the response situation and may be viewed by the responders as
just another worksheet to fill in. Teachers should look closely at
their peer response sheets and also at the comments that students
in their classes write on them to determine whether they have real
value for the writers. In some circumstances, they may also like to
consider relinquishing control of the peer response, so that it
becomes truly an alternative form of feedback, although they
52 ESL writers and feedback

should consider the cultural and educational backgrounds of the

students carefully before doing this since students from some
cultures might prefer closer teacher guidance.
The students in this study also pointed out that cultural factors
made them feel uncomfortable with the peer response situation
and discouraged them from being critical of each others’ work. As
we have seen, the case-study students independently found
responders outside the classroom to give them feedback.
Characteristically these peers were close friends or spouses. The
interactions were therefore more frank and relaxed and could be
controlled more by the students themselves, with the writers and
responders often sharing the same cultural expectations. The value
that the students placed on these responders, illustrated by the case
of Liang and her husband, contrasted with their negative attitudes
to the formal peer response. Teachers might think about the
potential benefits of such responders and encourage greater use of
these out of class resources, where they were available.
Researchers could also consider further investigations of the role
of such outside responders.
This study suggests that teacher interventions are made within
the classroom context where the relationships between teachers
and students are both complex and unequal in terms of power. The
two episodes illustrate Hall’s point that appropriation can involve
both concepts of good and bad writing products and good and bad
writing behaviour (1995: 162). These students were at a crucial
stage in their development since, after this course, they would be
expected to take full responsibility for their own writing and to
revise it on their own, using their own strategies. Teachers should
consider ways of helping students to do this and try not to control
the feedback process too rigidly.

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 Fiona Hyland 53

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