Using Teacher Feedback to Foster Chinese University Students’ Self-regulated Learning of Writing in English as a Foreign Language (EFL)

Abstract

Although studies on EFL/L2 writing feedback have flourished in the past decade, questions remain as to whether and how feedback enhances students’ development of self-regulated learning (SRL) in the EFL/L2 writing context. The present study was set up to fill the gap. It aimed to better understand the extent to which teacher feedback fostered EFL learners’ development of self-regulated writing strategies and how strategically these learners engaged in teacher feedback. Drawing on the SRL model by Zimmerman (2000) and the feedback model by Hattie and Timperley (2007), the SRL-based feedback model was hypothesized to help develop EFL learners’ self-regulation and writing performance. Set within a Chinese university, this study used a mixed-methods design in three research phases over 16 weeks. In Phase One, an initial quasi-experimental study deployed a pretest-treatment-posttest-delayed post-test comparison group design to examine the effects of teacher feedback on EFL student writers’ self-regulation and writing performance. Two classes with 70 students were randomly assigned to a treatment group exposed to the SRL-based feedback practice and a control group involved in conventional feedback activity. Three questionnaires from the perspectives of SRL capacity, writing motivational beliefs and self-efficacy, and the pre-test, post-test and the delayed post-test for measuring writing performance provided quantitative data on the intervention effects. To understand how students developed self-regulated writing strategies when they engaged with SRL-based feedback, Phase Two documented the writing process of a purposive sample of nine students, three from each of the high, intermediate, and low self-regulated student groups with three multiple-draft writing assignments and through semi-structured interviews. In Phase Three, stimulated recall interviews enabled three skilled self-regulators and three less-skilled self-regulators to describe how they implemented changes to their drafts as a response to feedback received. During both phases, data were triangulated through multiple interviews, written drafts, error logs and reflective journals to enrich thematic analysis and constant comparison. Together, both quantitative and qualitative data confirmed the positive effects of SRL-based feedback on EFL learners’ writing achievement, self-regulation, writing motivation and self-efficacy. Following the intervention, the treatment group showed a large increase in their overall writing performance and subcategories of writing performance: Content, organisation, and vocabulary. Metacognitively, the treatment appeared to assist their development and use of planning strategies and increased monitoring on the learning process evident in updating goals, modifying learning, and writing strategies. Cognitively, it seemed to enhance more conscious quality text processing and strategic use of learning resources. The SRL-feedback practice appeared to have enhanced motivational regulation and facilitated EFL students to regulate master-oriented motivation, heighten interest in the multiple-draft practice and develop self-reinforcement. Social-behaviourally, students were more inclined to take initiatives in seeking teacher help. Finally, the stimulated recalls identified the highly varied experience between the skilled and less-skilled self-regulated learners (i.e., self-regulators) in engaging with teachers’ feedback due to interactions among metacognitive, cognitive, behavioural, affective and agentic dimensions. The skilled self-regulators had stronger metacognitive awareness, greater depth of processing and more strategic response to the teacher’s feedback, resulting in writing-level or learning-level engagement. Less-skilled self-regulators operated feedback more for task outcomes and were less proactive for learning outcomes. The study concluded that SRL-based feedback was efficient in facilitating EFL/L2 learners’ writing performance and self-regulated learning for writing and that SRL capability across individual students influenced their response to writing differentially.