The effect of the instructor’s feedback strategies on the improvement of students’ short essay writing skills

Abstract

The study interpreted in this article investigated the effect of the instructor’s feedback strategies on the improvement of students’ writing skills, especially their ability to eliminate irrelevant sentences and to avoid awkward structures. A review of the related literature including the role of teacher’s feedback in the process writing approach; principles and conditions of good feedback practice; forms and types of feedback; and previous research evidence on the benefits of feedback provides the theoretical base for this study in which 48 English sophomores participated. The collected data consisted of 48 comparison and contrast compositions submitted in the 12th week of the 1st semester and 39 questionnaire surveys completed on the final day of the class meeting. After marking these compositions it was found that the number of the two typical errors (irrelevant sentences and awkward structures) was significantly reduced in comparison with the previous ones. This is also in line with the positive result of the survey on the students’ evaluation of feedback strategies. However, some limitations are inevitable, so recommendations for further studies on this issue can be found at the end of this article.