Junqueira, L., Payant, C. (2015) Pp. (19-36)

‘‘I just want to do it right, but it’s so hard’’:
A novice teacher’s written feedback beliefs and practices

Luciana Junqueira a,*, Caroline Payant b
a
The University of Alabama in Huntsville, United States
b
The University of Idaho, United States
Abstract
This case study investigated teacher feedback beliefs and practices of a pre-service L2 writing teacher over one academic
semester. Kim, the focal participant, was a second year MA TESOL student and taught an English composition course to ESL
students at the university level. Data sources included four sets of commented-on students’ essays, a reflective journal, two semi-
structured interviews, and member checking with the teacher. Students’ essays were coded for four types of written corrective
feedback (WCF) (direct, direct with explanation, indirect, indirect with explanation) and compared to Kim’s beliefs, as discussed in
her journals and interviews. The analyses show, among other findings, that Kim believed in providing feedback on global concerns
and, to a lesser extent, on local issues and in offering explanations to WCF instances. However, a detailed analysis of her actual
practices revealed some mismatches, such that local WCF (83.9%) significantly outnumbered global WCF (16.1%). Other beliefs
included the following themes: Feedback needs to be contextualized, is time-consuming, is a process that requires practice, and can
lead to better writing. Relevant pedagogical implications for L2 teacher education and recommended reflective tools to support
teachers as they develop feedback practices are discussed in the paper.
# 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Teacher response; Written corrective feedback; Pre-service teachers; Teacher beliefs; Teacher education
Introduction
The field of second language (L2) writing has evolved considerably in the past few decades, and the following areas
of inquiry have received increasing attention among L2 writing researchers: contrastive rhetoric, the product-process
debate, the fluency-accuracy dilemma, and error correction (Casanave, 2004). Among these, error correction is one of
the most complex and controversial topics. Writing teachers are well aware of the complexities involved in responding
to student writing, and these challenges become even greater for L21 writing teachers who are concerned with
fostering improvement in students’ writing abilities as well as promoting global development in language proficiency
(Casanave, 2004; Hyland & Hyland, 2006).
* Corresponding author at: The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), Morton Hall 232B, 301 Sparkman Drive, Huntsville, AL 35899,
United States. Tel.: +1 256 824 2370; fax: +1 256 824 2387.
E-mail address: luciana.findlay@uah.edu (L. Junqueira).
1
The term L2 is used for both ‘‘second’’ and ‘‘foreign’’ language throughout the paper.
20 L. Junqueira, C. Payant / Journal of Second Language Writing 27 (2015) 19–36
To date, although extensive, research2 on the benefits of written corrective feedback (WCF) and teacher response in
improving learners’ L2 development and accuracy is still controversial, and findings remain inconclusive (see Ferris,
1999, 2004, 2010; Truscott, 1996, 1999). Nonetheless, studies have consistently shown that learners are interested in
and appreciative of teacher correction (e.g., Chandler, 2003; Diab, 2005a, 2005b; Ferris, 1995). Despite the fact that
providing WCF is a daunting task for L2 writing teachers and that learners expect and desire it, research in the field has
not extensively investigated teachers’ responses to student writing along with the pedagogical choices that inform their
practices (Guénette & Lyster, 2013; Lee, 2009). Several studies have focused on teachers’ WCF practices in various
pedagogical contexts (e.g., Ferris, 2006; Guénette & Lyster, 2013; Jodaie & Farrokhi, 2012; Lee, 2010; Montgomery
& Baker, 2007). However, research on L2 writing teachers’ beliefs regarding responding to student writing is limited
as are explorations of the alignment of teachers’ beliefs and actual practices (Ferris, 2014; Furneaux, Paran, & Fairfax,
2007; Jodaie & Farrokhi, 2012; Lee, 2008, 2009). As Montgomery and Baker (2007) maintain, ‘‘most research on self-
assessment has focused on students’ self-assessment to improve their writing performance instead of on teachers’ self-
assessment to improve their feedback performance’’ (p. 84).
In language pedagogy research, it has been shown that teachers’ practices are greatly influenced by personal
theories and beliefs (Borg, 2003). Yet, the relationship between beliefs and practices of pre-service L2 writing teachers
as they learn how to respond to the writing of non-native speakers of English is an area that remains under-investigated
and that we believe deserves more attention. As Bazerman (1994) argues, ‘‘it is within students, of course, that the
learning occurs, but it is within the teacher, who sits at the juncture of forces above, below and sideways that the
learning situations are framed’’ (p. 29). Accordingly, the present semester-long case study aims at helping advance our
knowledge of WCF beliefs and practices in less seasoned teachers and seeks to offer practical pedagogical
recommendations for L2 teacher educators as they guide pre-service teachers in the development of informed theories
of response to student writing.
The goals of the present study were thus threefold: (1) to examine a novice teacher’s beliefs about general WCF as
well as her own practices in responding to student writing, (2) to explore her beliefs in light of her actual WCF
practices, and (3) to uncover what informs these beliefs and practices. Although case studies hardly allow for
generalizations, we hope that this contextualized case study will help shed some light on the beliefs and experiences of
a pre-service teacher, and we conclude the paper by offering ideas for L2 writing pedagogy. By providing a detailed
account of the participant’s first semester navigating the challenges of responding to student writing, it is our hope that
researchers, teacher educators, and other L2 writing teachers may gain a deeper understanding of the complex factors
that shape a novice teacher’s beliefs and practices. As Duff (2008) explains, ‘‘the assumption is that a thorough
exploration of a phenomenon [e.g., a novice teacher responding to L2 student writing] [. . .] will be of interest to others
who may conduct research of a similar nature elsewhere. Other readers may simply seek the vicarious experience and
insights gleaned from gaining access to individuals and sites they might not otherwise have access to’’ (p. 51).
Before introducing the study and discussing the main findings, we first review pertinent literature on teacher
feedback as well as research on teacher cognition in L2 writing instruction.
Literature review
In the field of L2 writing, there is an extensive body of research on the effectiveness of error correction in L2 writing
classes; nevertheless, the ultimate success of error feedback on the improvement of L2 writing remains inconclusive
(for a review of these issues see especially the ongoing debates between Ferris, 1999, 2004, and Truscott, 1996, 1999,
2004, 2007 and Truscott & Hsu, 2008). Keeping in line with the goals of the present study, namely exploring the beliefs
and practices of an L2 writing teacher, the following sections do not highlight research on the benefits, or lack thereof,
of CF on writing and language development; rather, we primarily emphasize studies that have examined L2 writing
teachers’ practices regarding teacher feedback and their cognitions.
2
The present paper focuses on written corrective feedback, and although the literature on oral corrective feedback is quite prolific, it is beyond the
scope of our study and is not discussed here.
L. Junqueira, C. Payant / Journal of Second Language Writing 27 (2015) 19–36 21
Research on L2 writing teachers’ WCF practices and beliefs
Despite the ample literature on how WCF impacts language development and writing accuracy (see Bitchener &
Ferris, 2012 and Ferris, 2010 for a review of research on WCF), ‘‘much less research [. . .] has investigated how
teachers respond to their students’ writing and what justifies their pedagogical choices’’ (Guénette & Lyster, 2013, p.
130). Research has examined teachers’ practices in college composition settings with ESL learners (Ferris, 2006;
Zamel, 1985), in Intensive English Programs (IEP) with pre-matriculated ESL learners (Montgomery & Baker, 2007),
and in EFL and ESL secondary settings (Furneaux et al., 2007; Lee, 2004, 2008, 2009). What we know from this
current body of work is that L2 writing teachers from various educational settings appear to rely overwhelmingly more
on direct correction, tend to provide comprehensive rather than selective WCF, and that local issues are usually the
focus of their WCF. Regarding writing teachers’ own English background and their WCF practices, Hyland and Anan
(2006) found that non-native speaking teachers were less lenient compared to native speaking teachers when
identifying and judging the severity of errors.
Research on the beliefs of writing teachers and the pedagogical choices that influence how they respond to student
writing is much more scant. Jodaie and Farrokhi (2012), for instance, recruited 30 EFL teachers from a private
language institute and examined their perceptions towards CF practices. Relying on questionnaire data, they found that
approximately half of the teachers favored comprehensive feedback (56.7%) over selective feedback (43.3%).
Guénette and Lyster’s (2013) work with high school ESL tutors revealed that the majority of their participants
preferred selective CF and described their practices as relying either solely on direct CF (N = 6) or a combination of
direct and indirect CF (N = 8). The authors then created post hoc individual tutor profiles and identified that the pre-
service teachers in fact favored selective and direct WCF. Recently, Ferris (2014) sought to include the voice of writing
teachers regarding beliefs about feedback practices. Specifically, she and a research team implemented a survey with
college writing instructors (N = 129) working at eight different post-secondary institutions followed by interviews
with volunteer participants from this pool of respondents (N = 23). The interviews focused on their philosophies and
beliefs towards responding to students’ work. Interview results indicate, among other findings, that teachers’ practices
are guided by a desire to build student confidence and to increase accountability. There was a strong consensus that
feedback should be individualized and conversational in nature. Finally, teachers expressed their struggles with
prioritizing feedback and being efficient time-wise. Drawing on the qualitative analysis of interview responses, Ferris
identified four types of teachers: the idealist, the pragmatist, the outsider, and the dedicated veteran. She further
compared responses to actual data and identified both ‘‘convergences and mismatches between what teachers said
about their practices and philosophies and what was observed in their written responses’’ (p. 19).
Other studies also point to complex relationships between teacher beliefs and practices. Lee (2009) found
mismatches between her in-service EFL high school teacher participants’ beliefs and practices. In her study, teachers
believed that good writing involves more than grammatical accuracy, but their WCF focused primarily on language
form. They also preferred selective WCF but provided comprehensive WCF on students’ work. Similarly,
Montgomery and Baker (2007) investigated 13 IEP writing teachers’ beliefs about their feedback practices through a
Likert-scale questionnaire and analyzed the actual WCF provided on students’ essays included in their final portfolios.
The authors report that the teachers underestimated the amount of WCF they offered on local issues and overestimated
the amount of WCF they provided on global issues, such as content and organization. In other words, the teachers
indicated in the questionnaires that they provided a lot of feedback on global concerns, but the analyses of their actual
WCF revealed more instances of WCF on grammar and mechanics.
As for factors influencing teachers’ beliefs and practices, Lee’s (2008) participants attributed their response
practices primarily to the exam culture in Hong Kong and to expectations from the English panel in their school. These
external contextual forces appeared to play a greater role on how the teachers responded to their students’ writing than
some of their own beliefs, namely that there is more to good writing than grammatical correctness. Another constraint
mentioned by Lee’s (2008, 2009) teacher participants was lack of time to provide more balanced WCF. Similarly, the
pre-service teachers in Guénette and Lyster’s (2013) study mentioned time constraints as an important factor
impacting how they responded to essays. Adapting their feedback practices to students’ proficiency was another great
concern for these novice teachers, and they also feared overwhelming the students with too much feedback.
In their study on the backgrounds, philosophies, and practice of college writing instructors, both in mainstream and
in ESL composition courses, Ferris, Brown, Liu, and Arnaudo Stine (2011) found that instructors were generally not
well prepared to address L2 students’ needs. Specifically, their general results revealed that most instructors, in
attempting to adapt to responding to L2 writers’ texts, provided detailed feedback on language errors. Additionally,
many teachers believed they were addressing these students’ needs by referring them to external resources, such as
sending them to ESL composition sections or to the writing center. Still some instructors were completely oblivious to
the fact that they had L2 students in their classes whereas others were aware of this fact but did not believe students’
language background to be relevant or that they had specific needs.
In summary, the current body of literature from a variety of instructional settings has not allowed consistent
findings. There is also a paucity of research on how pre-service teachers respond to L2 writing, especially
for matriculated ESL writers in college, and what informs their practices. Finally, few studies discuss
pedagogical implications for L2 teacher educators. The following section offers a brief review of L2 writing
teacher cognition research in order to provide a framework for the findings related to teacher beliefs and practices
later discussed.
Teacher cognition research in L2 writing instruction
Teacher cognition research is concerned with teachers’ thoughts, knowledge, and beliefs; that is, the
‘‘unobservable dimension of teaching – teachers’ mental lives’’ (Borg, 2009, p. 163). While this has been a prolific
area of study in the field of general education since the 1970s, L2 teacher cognition has a much shorter history (Borg,
2006), and studies have focused primarily on L2 grammar instruction (Baker & Murphy, 2011). The rapid emergence
of research on L2 teacher cognition can be attributed to the observation that ‘‘we cannot properly understand teachers
and teaching without understanding their thoughts, knowledge, and beliefs that influence what teachers do’’ (Borg,
2006, p. 163).
The limited body of research on the cognitions of L2 writing teachers has focused on diverse themes, not
allowing for any conclusive cognition framework. Nonetheless, what the current available literature in L2 writing
teacher cognition indicates is that beliefs impact teaching practices but not in a monolithic manner given the
complexity and malleability of teachers’ cognitions, which continue to evolve across time and experience. Beliefs
and practices appear to be influenced by several factors, including: (1) previous learning experiences (e.g., Lee,
2010, 2013; Shi & Cumming, 1995; Steinbach, 2009), (2) teacher training and teaching experience (e.g., Cumming,
1990; Ferris, 2014; Lee, 2010, 2013; Sengupta & Xiao, 2002; Shi & Cumming, 1995), as well as (3) institutional
contexts and values (e.g., Diab, 2005b; Jodaie & Farrokhi, 2012; Lee, 1998, 2003, 2008, 2009; Steinbach, 2009;
Tsui, 1996).
The somewhat limited body of work on teacher CF beliefs and practices reviewed here has focused primarily on
work with high school and IEP teachers with the exception of Ferris et al. (2011) and Ferris (2014). Moreover, the
majority of these studies report on in-service teachers, with the exception of Lee (2008) and Guénette and Lyster
(2013) who looked at pre-service EFL and ESL teachers, respectively. To examine these teachers’ beliefs, the
dominant data elicitation technique used in those studies was questionnaire. We believe, however, that drawing on one
teacher’s emic perspective can provide rich data that may supplement previously identified trends and also uncover
unique trajectories and beliefs that may be lost through quantitative data analysis. Thus, by exploring a pre-service
teacher’s practices and beliefs in a more in-depth and systematic way (i.e., through interviews, data from different sets
of essays, journal entries, and member checking), the present case study hopes to extend our knowledge about how L2
pre-service teachers form and apply their WCF beliefs and practices and to offer implications for preparing these L2
teachers to respond to student writing.
The study investigated the WCF practices and beliefs of a novice teacher teaching her first L2 composition class to
non-native matriculated undergraduate students in the United States By looking at beliefs in light of actual practices in
a naturalistic setting and using interviews and journaling, we believe that we can obtain a window into potential
tensions between theory and practice and help uncover some of the participant’s decision-making processes, practices,
and assumptions about providing written feedback. As a whole, the findings may serve to advance our knowledge of
how less experienced instructors, including graduate teaching assistants, develop their pedagogy on how to respond to
L2 student writing, and thus offer implications for more reflective and informed practices of novice/pre-service
teachers. The following research questions guided the study:
(1) What are the beliefs and practices of a novice teacher concerning response to ESL student writing?
(2) What informs a novice teacher’s decision-making processes about WCF?
It is important to clarify that it is not our goal to uncover a single truth or to predict what type of feedback is the most
effective or appropriate in L2 writing. Rather, we are interested in examining, through an emic perspective, how and
why the teacher participant makes the decisions she does in responding to her students’ writing.
Methods
Participant and context
As Duff (2008) points out, ‘‘in much single-case study research in applied linguistics, the selection of cases is
primarily based on opportunistic convenience sampling’’ (p. 114). This was also the case with the present study. The
participant, knowing the first author, volunteered to participate in this project since she met the criterion for the study:
novice teacher teaching L2 writing. At the time of the study, the participant, Kim,3 was in her second year of a master’s
degree program in TESOL at a large university in the Southeast of the United States. She held a graduate teaching
assistantship that included teaching two courses: English composition to non-native speakers and ‘‘Speaking and
Listening’’ at the institution’s IEP.
Kim, a native English speaker in her late twenties, was born and raised in the same state where the university was
located and had earned her first bachelor’s degree in Business from the same institution six years prior to starting
graduate school. She also held a bachelor’s degree in Foreign Languages and Literature from another U.S. university.
Kim had taught English and History to 8th grade students and Spanish to high school students for a year before joining
the MA program. When data collection began, she had been working in business for over six years and was keeping a
part-time job in office management while pursuing her graduate studies.
Kim’s first experience with English composition for non-native speakers took place during her first year in the MA
program when she co-taught an English composition course with a second year MA student. Co-teachers at her
master’s program observed the teachers-of-record as they planned and delivered lessons and could assist in grading
students’ essays and teaching one or two classes per semester for a year. It was only during her second year, when the
study was conducted, that Kim became the teacher-of-record for an English composition class. At the same time, she
also assumed full teaching responsibilities for a Speaking and Listening class at the university’s language institute.
Kim’s composition class for non-native speakers included 16 students from Chinese and Saudi Arabian
backgrounds and was the first of a two-course sequence of composition for non-native speakers of English. These
credit-bearing courses were the equivalent of freshman composition courses for native speakers and were taught by the
university’s MA TESOL students.
The objectives for this course were prescribed, yet Kim explained that instructors could choose the course
assignments as well as their grading system. She thus required her students to complete five major essays. Kim worked
with a draft system and conferencing in her class: For each essay, students wrote a rough draft that was worth 20% of
their final assignment grade and a final draft that was worth 80% of that grade. The percentage values of each
assignment varied from 10% to 20% of their final grade (80% total). The remaining 20% of the final grade included
class participation and homework assignments (10%) and a final portfolio (10%). Kim and her co-teacher (a first year
MA TESOL student) collaborated closely. The co-teacher was also a native English speaker from the southeast of the
United States and had taught EFL in South Korea for a year before joining the master’s program. To mentor her co-
teacher, Kim individually graded the first two sets of essays, shared the commented-on drafts so that her co-teacher
could see how Kim responded to the students’ writing, and also discussed the grading rubrics with her. For the other
three sets of essays, each instructor provided WCF on half of the students’ rough and final drafts. However, Kim
assigned the grades after reviewing the co-teacher’s markings and reading these essays. Yet, she did not change the co-
teacher’s feedback or provide further WCF on the essays assigned to the co-teacher.
In the first interview, Kim explained that she had two separate rubrics for rough and final drafts. The rubrics for the
rough drafts were tailored to each assignment and were modified versions of suggested rubrics from the teacher’s
manual of the textbook used for the class. For the final drafts, she followed a standardized rubric from the university’s
first-year writing program, also modifying items as she saw fit. Finally, Kim held individual student conference
meetings after students had turned in their final drafts.
3
The pseudonym was chosen by the participant.
Data collection procedures
Different data collection procedures were adopted in order to help us gather as much information as possible about
the participant’s perspectives, context, and factors at play in her WCF practices and belief systems. Using data
triangulation to verify the validity of research results is especially important in qualitative research for it offers a way to
search for ‘‘convergence in research findings,’’ capturing ‘‘alternative and multiple perspectives on social reality’’
(Hesse-Biber & Leavy, 2011, pp. 51–52).
The data sources included four sets of essays (i.e., two sets of rough drafts and two sets of final drafts) from eight
different students (her co-teacher provided feedback on the other eight students’ papers) with Kim’s WCF, grading
rubrics, the course syllabus, two 30-minute semi-structured interviews, four journal entries, and a member-checking
meeting with the participant once the data had been analyzed. The WCF on the students’ essays provided evidence of
Kim’s practices while the other artifacts, such as the grading rubrics and syllabus, were used to help contextualize her
practices and expectations. The journal entries and interviews were analyzed to identify her beliefs about WCF and
what informed these.
The study included two interviews: One was conducted after Kim had graded two papers (around midterm) and the
other took place at the end of the semester. The decision to include interviews at two distinct times was to capture
different insights Kim may have gleaned during the process. Specifically, the former focused on her beliefs and general
philosophies regarding providing teacher feedback as well as writing while the latter included questions about her
actual experiences during the semester. The second interview also enabled us to directly explore the potential impact
of keeping a journal and participating in the study on her beliefs and practices (see Appendix A for the interview
guides).
Interviews are among the most commonly used data collection procedures in case studies in applied linguistics;
however, they are not a completely objective method as they provide us with a joint product, one that is negotiated
between the interviewer and interviewee (Duff, 2008). As Duff further explains, they should not, therefore, be
examined out of context, as if they were facts. We view the interviews with the teacher participant as a ‘‘social
practice’’ (Talmy, 2010) and as an important method for generating data given that they allow for an emic perspective
of the participant’s own experiences and beliefs. Nevertheless, being fully aware of the co-constructed nature of
qualitative interviews, we analyzed the data generated by these in light of the research questions and the teacher’s
actual WCF practices on student writing as well as by presenting the findings to the participant herself in a member-
checking meeting.
The purpose of asking Kim to keep a journal was to capture her immediate responses and feelings when she
engaged in the process of responding to the essays. We did not give her specific prompts but rather requested that she
complete one entry every time she graded a major assignment, either during the actual process or soon afterwards.
Kim’s comments on drafts were inserted electronically using the comment function of Microsoft Word.
We recognize that the fact that Kim was aware of the study’s objectives could have influenced her beliefs and
behaviors. This phenomenon of research participants being influenced by the researcher, known as the ‘‘observer’s
paradox’’ (Labov, 1972), has been identified as one of the challenges of conducting qualitative research; however, we
believe that an ‘‘interpretive’’ paradigm (Merriam, 1998) is also one of the strengths of qualitative research as it seeks
to capture realities from an emic perspective. Because a holistic picture of Kim’s beliefs and practices could not be
painted without her own views, we found it necessary to inform her of the purposes of the study. Therefore, as
previously discussed, different data sources were included in order to increase the study’s rigor and mitigate this
observer’s paradox. We have also provided excerpts from the data to share Kim’s voice and bring to life her struggles
and successes while learning to respond to student writing. Finally, although aware of the study’s focus, Kim was
unaware of our personal beliefs regarding teacher response, and as the results show, there is limited evidence that she
adapted her feedback to her own beliefs articulated in the interviews and journal.
Data analysis
Data analysis was iterative throughout the semester. The interviews were audio recorded and immediately
transcribed verbatim by the first author, a process that guided the formulation of questions for the second interview.
Codes were primarily created in light of the research questions, yet, by also adopting open coding of recurrent themes,
we identified new insights pertinent to Kim’s experiences. Similarly, the journal entries were analyzed according to the
research questions and other recurrent themes and then compared to the interview themes and the WCF data from the
students’ essays.
Both rough and final drafts for two assignments (i.e., narrative and report essays) were analyzed for types of teacher
feedback provided by Kim, namely corrective feedback on local issues (i.e., grammar, mechanics) and global feedback
(i.e., organization, content). The ‘‘grammar’’ category encompassed errors related to syntax, morphology, as well as
lexicon, including word choice. Punctuation and spelling errors, typos, and formatting issues were grouped under
‘‘mechanics.’’ Kim’s feedback was coded as follows: direct, direct with explanation, indirect, and indirect with
explanation. For instance, a ‘‘grammar direct’’ could include instances where an incorrect verb tense was crossed out
and the correct target structure was provided. A ‘‘grammar direct with explanation’’ would include, in addition to the
correction, an explanation of the error, such as in the following comment provided by Kim on a narrative rough draft:
‘‘Wrong word form. Do not need the ‘-ing.’ You will not have an ‘-ing’ word directly following ‘to’ in an infinitive
phrase’’ [Essay #1, Comment #5]. ‘‘Grammar indirect’’ included underlined or highlighted mistakes. Finally,
‘‘grammar indirect with explanation’’ would include a general/categorical label such as ‘‘verb tense.’’ In addition, Kim
provided learners with a brief summary of the strengths and limitations of each paper. These summaries at the top of
each essay were also analyzed in terms of feedback content across the papers.
Both authors first coded 20% of the essay data (N = 6) independently, and the agreement was 95% with any
disagreements being resolved through discussion until consensus was reached. We then randomly divided the other
80% (N = 24) of the essays for independent coding. The first author initially coded the interview and journal data, and
the second author then reviewed the transcripts and identified themes.
The purpose of analyzing and coding Kim’s feedback was to gain a better understanding of her practices of
responding to her students’ writing and also to compare the actual feedback to her interviews in an attempt to identify
any possible underlying beliefs she might hold regarding her own teaching.
Results and discussion
Kim’s beliefs and practices
The first research question explored Kim’s beliefs and practices regarding the provision of teacher feedback. The
major themes that emerged from the interviews and journal entries as well as data from the commented-on drafts are
discussed here.
‘‘Always address global issues’’
The first recurrent theme was Kim’s emphasis on giving feedback on organization and content, pointing to the belief
that global issues should be the focus of teacher response. Evidence of this was identified during both interviews, as
shown in the following excerpts:
I always, always make an effort to, on every student’s feedback, comment on the organizational pattern. [. . .]
Organization first; I always address, the content, like, to make sure they are on topic and they fulfilled the need of
the assignment and in terms of ‘‘Did they give enough supporting details?’’ and things like that. [. . .] I always
address the organization, and the content, development, and ‘‘Did they provide the relevant material?’’
(Interview 1)
Organization was a biggie; if they had the content they needed as we’ve discussed, if the paper developed, do
they have supporting details, or facts or things like that. (Interview 2)
Global concerns were also a recurrent theme in Kim’s journal entries: ‘‘I focused mainly on organization of the
paper and the content they provided’’ (Journal 3). Later on in the semester, Kim continued to express her belief that
organization and content should be taught in writing classes:
I have spent some time in class doing 20 min. mini lessons and giving them exercises for these things [grammar
points], but I am supposed to focus on organization, development, thesis statements, writing styles, audience,
analysis. (Journal 4)
However, a close examination of her practices paints a more complex picture. As previously mentioned, for both
sets of essays, Kim provided learners with a summary at the top of each draft in which she addressed the paper as a
whole, synthesizing its major strengths and weaknesses. Of interest, it was found that the focus of these summaries
differed slightly for each type of essay. For the narrative essays, she made several suggestions on content, asking
students individualized questions in what seemed to be a scaffolding activity. In the report essays, the summaries
focused primarily on organization (especially thesis statements) and the use of source materials required for the paper.
Although this appears to be consistent with her belief that teachers should focus on global issues, the extent to
which Kim commented on content and organization was largely restricted to these general summaries. As seen in
Table 1,4 she provided limited suggestions on content and organization throughout both sets of essays for both drafts
compared to feedback on local issues. Specifically, including both the summaries and WCF throughout all of the
essays together, she provided 294 comments on global issues (16.1%) and 1,533 comments on local issues (83.9%).
This detailed analysis of her written feedback practices revealed certain inconsistencies between her beliefs and
practices, echoing previous research (Ferris, 2014). This said, it should be noted that Kim’s practices of providing
more WCF on local issues are not being criticized here. In fact, as an anonymous reviewer noted on a previous version
of this article, feedback on organization, for instance, might be addressed with one or two comments while local issues,
such as verb tenses, might elicit many more WCF instances throughout the essay. Nonetheless, it is also true that Kim
could have highlighted problems with grammar and mechanics once or twice and encouraged the students to look for
similar patterns in the rest of the essay and fix the errors on their own.
‘‘Also break down the grammar’’
In addition to her concerns with global aspects, Kim believed that providing feedback on local issues was important
because her students were non-native speakers of English:
Okay, so I feel that it’s more important to teach that [organization and content]; however, because they are non-
native speakers, at the same time I have to break down the grammar as much as I do while with native speakers I
wouldn’t have to. (Interview 1)
It seems noteworthy, however, that Kim had not expected the amount of help her non-native speaking students
appeared to need. The analysis of her early and late journal entries reveals her surprise with her students’ ongoing
grammar issues and also points to an internal conflict between her beliefs about the importance of focusing on global
and local issues.
Many of the students are struggling with verb tenses. . .is this supposed to be an issue at this level? I really do not
have time to teach grammar, but these students really need it. (Journal 1)
Grammar, articles, prepositions are still issues and I directly correct these in some cases. For sentences I try to
model things for them in my marginal comments, but I do not know if I’m doing this right. (Journal 3)
The commented-on essays corroborate the idea that problems at the sentence level became a major focus of
correction for Kim. She provided more extensive comments on grammar and mechanics than on organization and
content at each stage of the writing process for both essays, as illustrated in Tables 2 and 3. For the rough and final
drafts of the narrative essays, she provided 528 and 466 comments on local issues, respectively; she offered 370 and
179 comments on local issues for the rough and final drafts of the report essays, respectively. These numbers greatly
exceed the number of comments on global issues: 88 and 87 instances for the rough and final drafts of the narrative
essays and 93 and 31 for the rough and final drafts of the report essays.
Another interesting finding was Kim’s apparent awareness of her beliefs and her attempt to put what she believed
into practice. For instance, for the narrative essay, Kim responded to her students’ lack of grammar control and gave
extensive feedback at the sentence level throughout the drafts. Possibly aware of her belief that global issues take
precedence over local issues, she emphasized during the first interview that for the following essays she had planned to
offer fewer detailed comments in terms of local issues.
I would comment on everything, like if I found an incorrect verb tense, I’d say incorrect verb tense, or a bad
sentence structure, I’d say bad sentence. So, or this seems to need to be rephrased; it’s a run-on or fragment and I
4
The numbers presented in the tables reflect the total WCF instances provided by Kim on the pool of essays analyzed rather than averages per
paper. We believe that adding this additional level of detail might detract from the study’s main focus, namely, how Kim navigated the process of
responding to student writing.
Table 1
Summary of teacher feedback strategies.
Essay type Global feedback Local feedback
a
Dir. Dir. w/Exp. Ind. Ind. w/Exp. Dir. Dir. w/Exp. Ind. Ind. w/Exp.
Narrative 22 21 17 115 590 34 171 189
Report 4 6 3 106 351 6 123 69
Subtotal 26 (8.8%) 27 (9.2%) 20 (6.8%) 221 (75.2%) 941 (61.4%) 40 (2.6%) 294 (19.2%) 258 (16.8%)
294 (16.1%) 1,533 (83.9%)
Total 1,827
a
Dir.: direct correction; Dir. w/Exp.: direct correction with metalinguistic explanation; Ind.: indirect correction; Ind. w/Exp.: indirect correction
with metalinguistic explanation.
Table 2
Written corrective feedback on local issues across essays.
Type Grammar Mechanics
Dir. Dir. w/Ex. Ind. Ind. w/Ex. Total Dir. Dir. w/Ex. Ind. Ind. w/Ex. Total Total CF
Narrative essay RDa 270 14 67 93 444 78 0 1 5 84 528
Narrative essay FDb 151 14 101 76 352 91 6 2 15 114 466
Report essay RD 148 0 118 47 313 46 1 2 8 57 370
Report essay FD 139 3 3 14 159 18 2 0 0 20 179
Total 708 31 289 230 1,258 233 9 5 28 275 1,533
a
Rough draft.
b
Final draft.
Table 3
Feedback on global issues across essays.
Type Organization Content
Dir. Dir. w/Ex. Ind. Ind. w/Ex. Total Dir. Dir. w/Ex. Ind. Ind. w/Ex. Total Total CF
Narrative essay RD 9 4 7 16 36 4 14 10 24 52 88
Narrative essay FD 6 3 0 36 45 3 0 0 39 42 87
Report essay RD 2 2 0 27 31 1 4 0 52 57 93
Report essay FD 1 0 1 6 8 0 0 2 21 23 31
Total 18 9 8 85 120 8 18 12 136 174 294
would give a model, and I would do that all throughout the paper [. . .] And then this second essay that they did I
told them, you know, I was gonna get a little less specific. (Interview 1)
To determine whether changes were observable between the earlier and later stages of the semester, the WCF
provided for each essay type was compared. We found that WCF on local issues had diminished for the report essay
from 994 to 549 comments (see Table 2). Nonetheless, it should be noted that the amount of feedback on global issues
also decreased from the narrative to the report essay, from 174 to 124. In sum, while Kim believed that global issues
were more important, she continued to provide most of her comments on local issues – a finding that suggests that this
tension persisted.
Kim’s central belief about providing global feedback to learners seems in line with previous studies from the field of
WCF (e.g., Lee, 2008, 2009; Montgomery & Baker, 2007). However, the task of providing teacher feedback on L2
writing is not limited to this dimension. Like more experienced teachers, Kim was also concerned with her learners’
developing L2 proficiency, which was apparent in her belief that L2 learners benefit from WCF for local issues. While
the tensions that Kim experienced have also been reported as challenges with more seasoned teachers (Lee, 2008), the
present findings suggest that this is an issue that develops early in L2 teacher’s practices of responding to student
writing, and initiatives in teacher education programs that seek to increase awareness and training are warranted, a
point that we return to in the pedagogical implications section.
‘‘Providing contextualized feedback’’
Kim also maintained that effective feedback needs to be contextualized and believed in providing explanation or
‘‘models’’ to students. During the first interview, she explained her thoughts when encountering local issues:
So this seems to need to be rephrased; it’s a run-on or fragment and I would give a model, and I would do that all
throughout the paper. (Interview 1)
Nevertheless, an interesting pattern in Kim’s feedback is again suggestive of some inconsistencies between this
belief and her practices. As can be seen from Table 1, she offered primarily direct and indirect feedback without
explanation on local issues (i.e., 61.4% and 19.2%, respectively). On the other hand, for global concerns, indirect WCF
accompanied by explanations was her primary strategy (75.2%). The fact that Kim provided more explanations for
global issues might have accounted for her perception that her primary focus was on content and organization.
‘‘Providing feedback is time-consuming and intimidating’’
Among the emergent themes in Kim’s interviews and journal entries, the belief that responding to students’ writing
is a time consuming and difficult process was frequent. During her first interview, Kim explained that ‘‘Those first
groups of essays, it took about an hour a piece, and so about 16 hours of grading.’’5 In her second interview, she
expressed that she struggled with the task of providing feedback as follows:
It’s just, you know, you just get tired, you really gotta get through it. [. . .] So managing the time has been a
constant struggle, constant. (Interview 2)
My first semester was a struggle ‘cause I felt, like, extremely intimidated. (Interview 2)
These feelings of exhaustion and conflict were also echoed in her journal entries:
My feedback took way too long. [. . .] I think I commented on every line. I do not have the time it takes to help
them with every problem they have in their writing. (Journal 1)
The task of grading and giving feedback is daunting and mentally exhausting. (Journal 2)
Like Kim, the in-service teachers in Lee’s (2008, 2009) study and the pre-service tutors in Guénette and Lyster
(2013) also struggled with time constraints, a notorious challenge faced by composition teachers in general and L2
writing teachers in particular (Ferris, 2010). A close analysis of Kim’s practices suggests that she may have adopted a
coping strategy to deal with this issue. Specifically, we identified in the data that 80.6% of her WCF moves regarding
local issues did not involve any explanations, which could have been a subconscious or intuitive strategy for dealing
with the time pressure she experienced throughout the semester.
‘‘Each student is different’’
Throughout the data, Kim explained that the balance between local and global issues would depend on students’
individual needs:
[E]ach student is different, their writing is different, but at least I always address the organization, and the
content, development, and, um, did they provide the relevant material? [. . .]That does not vary, okay? However,
not every student has issues with verb tenses, so I’m not gonna, if a student is not having issues with correct verb
tenses, in that grammar, I’m not gonna focus on each too much. [. . .] However, a student whose paper is full of
grammar, I feel that is more important that I help that student improve their grammar before I try to tell them
where to put a comma. (Interview 1)
Kim also admitted that she was aware of how her practices were impacted by the unique relationships she developed
with her students:
5
At times, Kim uses the term ‘‘grading’’ to refer to the processes of both scoring and giving feedback although these are different steps in the
process of responding to student writing.
[B]ecause [responding to student writing is] so different from student to student. . .or my relationship with the
student, like, in terms of do they have an open communication with me? Do they e-mail me and ask me questions
frequently? Do they come see me in my office hours? Sometimes I wonder if that type of, um [. . .] you know,
them showing that they are trying, if that influences me in their grading. (Interview 1)
Kim’s concerns regarding adapting her feedback strategies to her students’ individual proficiency levels and
needs support previous findings (Guénette & Lyster, 2013; Lee, 2009). Having students with various skills is the
norm in ESL classrooms, not the exception, and even a pre-service teacher like Kim appears to have been aware of
individual student’s needs, though she might not have always been successful at tailoring her feedback practices to
such needs.
‘‘Feedback fosters good writing’’
Despite being an arduous process, Kim’s answers suggest that she perceived WCF as an important tool to help boost
students’ confidence and to help them become better writers, which may explain why she engaged so wholeheartedly
in such a daunting task.
I’m trying to give them feedback and advice that will help them become better writers as well as more confident
to write in their second language [. . .] and feel like they’ve learned something; that’s my hope. (Interview 1)
[T]he corrective feedback, [. . .] I believe is probably the most beneficial to them for their writing. (Interview 2)
Although time management issues became an important factor for Kim as she developed new feedback strategies,
she explained that she was willing to take the time to respond to her students’ essays because she believed that her
feedback would help students become better writers, as illustrated below.
I think if I really wanna make things right for my students and, I really want them to be good writers, then it’s
going to be a time-consuming process; I don’t think it’s something that needs to be rushed because I don’t feel
like taking the time to grade, I mean, that’s something as a teacher, you gotta be willing to do the work and take
the time because that’s what it takes. (Interview 2)
The conviction that WCF is beneficial to the development of student writing might also explain why Kim
demonstrated a deep concern for ensuring that all students receive fair feedback. Finally, while Kim appeared to
have been quite sensitive to what needed to be addressed in her students’ writing and how to develop pedagogically
sound practices, she was clearly aware that feedback practices were part of developing her own pedagogy, as
seen next.
‘‘Giving feedback requires practice’’
One final theme that emerged during the interviews was the importance of having experience in responding to
students’ writing. Kim believed that after providing feedback during the semester, she became somewhat more
comfortable responding to student writing, in particular concerning consistency in scoring essays.
The thing is I think because this has been my first semester to really have to do this, and as I’ve gotten more
comfortable with my own grading and their writing, I feel like I have gotten more consistent in the distribution of
the grades. [. . .] I think I’ve gotten better and I’ve become more uniform in it and things like that to where I’m not
having to go back every few drafts. (Interview 2)
Although she recognized improvements in her feedback practices, Kim seemed aware that she needed more
practice in responding to student writing.
I think just probably because I’ve gotten a little more confident in my own ability to assess their writing; I don’t
think it’s perfect I think it needs a lot more improvement just because this is my first semester to do this.
(Interview 2)
Additionally, Kim’s explanation of her decision of having her co-teacher respond to some essays also point to her
belief about the importance of having experience with providing WCF.
She [co-teacher] never scored a grade; she never assigned grades; I only let her comment and I would review her
comments in line with what I would do; it created a little extra work for me but she needed the practice, you
know? (Interview 1)
In sum, the major themes discussed thus far are the following regarding teacher feedback: (1) teacher feedback
should focus on global issues as well as, but to a lesser extent, on local issues; (2) it needs to be contextualized; (3) it is
a time-consuming task; (4) it should address students’ individual needs; (5) it is a process that requires practice; and (6)
it can lead to better writing.
Kim’s decision-making processes
The second research question sought to examine the decision-making processes underlying Kim’s feedback beliefs
and practices. The next section presents guiding principles that emerged from the data as they relate to her beliefs.
‘‘Following the rules’’
When asked how she decided to focus on global issues, Kim replied that it was to meet learning outcomes stipulated
at the start of the course and rubrics:
Well, in terms of organization and content that’s just to meet specific learning outcomes, and they are part of the
first year writing program as well as it’s part of the main rubric, so that guided my opinion, I mean, how I did it in
terms of that. (Interview 1)
This highlights the importance of working closely with less experienced teachers in providing clear program
expectations as further discussed in the pedagogical implications section.
‘‘The ideal writer’’
In spite of attributing her decision to focus on global issues to meet learning outcomes, Kim also appeared to be
guided by an idealized writer. For instance, she repeatedly identified content and organization as features of the writing
of good writers. When asked what she considered to be ‘‘good writers,’’ Kim responded: ‘‘They can analyze, they can
just, their sentence structures vary throughout the essay, they transition well between ideas, so their content develops as
well as flows, I mean, yeah, those are what I consider good writers.’’ (Interview 1)
‘‘Feedback needs to be fair’’
Another common trend in her process of providing feedback was the notion of impartiality. During the interviews,
she explained that all students should receive fair grades – this being one of Kim’s main priorities in the process of
responding to student writing. She explained that:
[I]t’s not easy ‘cause I always wonder ‘‘Okay, am I being fair, am I doing the same on every paper’’ or am I
getting to this paper and I’m so exhausted I’m overlooking things I shouldn’t? (Interview 1)
Later in the first interview, she brought up again the practices she went through when responding to students’ papers
to ensure she was being fair, as seen below:
[T]hat’s why I use the rubric that’s why I have it in front of me, you know, and sometimes, you know, I may score
a paper and then I’ll read another one, a couple of papers later, and I’m like ‘‘Um?’’, and then I have to go back to
that other paper and look at it and make sure that I was fair because and I’ve found myself sometimes changing it
before I send it to the student[. . .]. (Interview 1)
This was also observed in her journal entries:
I struggle again with the grading being fair, and not just giving As to everybody. I am having a hard time
determining what makes an A paper or a C paper – even with a rubric. The rubrics I am using, I believe are
helpful. . .but still not cut and dry. The grading is objective and what if a student gets a higher grade b/c I related
to the story better or on a personal level. I just hope I maintained a distance from the writing as a rater. . .not as
one who sees my students as I read their papers. (Journal 2)
‘‘Practical constraints vs. beliefs’’

While Kim’s practices appeared to have indeed been somewhat guided by what she perceived as important,
practical issues seem to have also influenced her decision-making processes. In the following journal excerpt, we see
how divided Kim appeared to be between how she would like to respond to her students’ writing and what she could
actually do given practical limitations.
The feedback process is getting faster but it is still a daunting task. Between my own classes, prepping for
teaching, the IEP and grading. . .I am tired of doing this. I find myself putting off the grading and then feeling
guilty when I finally get to it. Maybe my guilt is reflective in the type of comments I give. [. . .] I think I am still
giving too much direct feedback and perhaps appropriating text (which I am sure I am doing on some papers).
However, with time constraints and lack of space to explain everything I must do this. (Journal 4)
As aforementioned, the analyses of the commented-on essays reveal that Kim in fact provided extensive direct
feedback, and her comments were primarily on local issues, going against her beliefs that the focus of teacher feedback
should be on organization and content. This finding reflects another major trend in L2 writing research: identification
of mismatches between beliefs and practice (e.g., Cumming, 1990; Diab, 2005b; Ferris, 2014; Guénette, 2010; Lee,
1998, 2003, 2008, 2009; Montgomery & Baker, 2007).
We saw that Kim provided significantly more feedback on local issues (83.9%) compared to global issues (16.1%)
despite her articulated beliefs that she should focus primarily on content and organization. The study also reveals that
direct correction without explanation was Kim’s most common WCF strategy (61.4%) for local issues just as with the
teachers in studies by Ferris (2006), Lee (2008, 2009), and Guénette and Lyster (2013). On the other hand, her most
common feedback strategy for global issues was indirect with explanation (75.2%). While it seems clear Kim believed
that providing students with explanations and modeling may help them understand expectations and improve their
writing, this belief did not always appear to have been translated into her practices regarding local issues.
Nevertheless, Kim’s provision of more indirect types of feedback with explanation on content and organization seems
fitting given the fact that global concerns can be more taxing for students to grasp and for teachers to offer feedback on
(Chandler, 2003; Hartshorn et al., 2010).
‘‘Not able to incorporate all beliefs into teaching’’
As part of increasing the rigor and objectivity of the research findings, we followed member-checking procedures
by presenting our analyses to Kim. The emergent themes for the interviews, journal, and commented-on essays were
discussed with her when we went over data coding issues. While Kim readily agreed with most of the analyses, she was
not pleased with the apparent mismatch between her beliefs and practices. Like the teachers in Montgomery and
Baker’s (2007) study, Kim was surprised by the amount of WCF she provided on local issues and expressed the
following: ‘‘I want you to acknowledge in your member checking that I am not happy that I was not able to incorporate
all my beliefs in my teaching. This is disappointing. I just want to do it right, but it’s so hard’’ (Member Checking
Interview). Of course she was assured that any possible mismatches were not going to be treated as criticisms of her
teaching, and we pointed out that mismatches between teacher beliefs and practices are in fact a common trend in
teacher cognition research (see Borg, 2006) as well as in research on teacher beliefs and practices regarding oral
corrective feedback (e.g., Junqueira & Kim, 2013).
Pedagogical implications
The present study systematically examined one pre-service teacher’s beliefs and practices regarding written teacher
feedback. Drawing on the findings, our aim is to contribute to the current knowledge of how less experienced teachers
develop their approaches to responding to student writing and offer explicit pedagogical recommendations for future
teacher trainers and teachers who work in similar settings and deal with related constraints. The mismatches between
Kim’s beliefs and her practices and, more importantly, her struggles with responding to L2 student writing have also
been found to be the experiences of more seasoned teachers (e.g., Ferris, 2006, 2014; Guénette, 2010; Lee, 2008, 2009;
Montgomery & Baker, 2007). However, the present study shows that such issues arose quite early in the pre-service
teacher’s beliefs and practices and indicates that L2 teacher-training programs might be in an ideal position to
intervene and help such novice teachers better navigate the challenging demands of responding to student writing.
Specifically, during their L2 education programs, pre-service teachers typically learn about research from the field
of second language acquisition (SLA) theories. Normally, they begin by learning about early theories that focused on
the nature of learner error and pedagogically motivated aspects of feedback (i.e., which errors to correct, when to
correct), particularly oral CF since connections to writing research are generally weak. These theories were built on the
assumption that errors could be avoided if they were corrected. Such courses often explore more recent developmental
theories of SLA that examine whether CF actually leads to L2 development (see, e.g., Bitchener & Ferris, 2012, for a
discussion). Today, evidence indicates that as learners acquire their L2s, they go through various stages of cognitive
development such that errors are seen as inevitable and might require selective, explicit attention (see Bitchener &
Ferris, 2012; Ferris, 2010; Polio, 2012). Although the debate on the effectiveness of written error correction in L2
writing is far from being resolved, we agree with Polio (2012) that SLA theory and research are extremely relevant for
learning about WCF on a theoretical level. During their training, we believe it is imperative that pre-service teachers
become familiar with SLA theories, especially with current views on the importance of errors, and that they discuss
how these theories can inform their actual practices of providing WCF on student essays. Importantly, novice teachers
need to be introduced to research that shows that providing extensive WCF on local errors may be futile until learners
are developmentally ready for processing the WCF. Furthermore, ensuring that pre-service teachers understand
various perspectives regarding learner error and L2 writing (e.g., cognitive perspectives and socio-cultural
perspectives) could help them develop theory-grounded beliefs and make more informed decisions while responding
to their students’ papers.
Theoretical knowledge is, however, not sufficient for pre-service teachers to change their beliefs (Kennedy, 1997)
or develop their teacher response pedagogy. Accordingly, in addition to having a clear grasp of theories, teacher
educators need to introduce the practice of responding to student writing in a very systematic way, paying attention to
both global and local concerns. Ferris (2010) argues that it is important that pre-service teachers practice providing
feedback related to global issues independently of local issues. This practice reflects the idea that providing feedback
on global and local issues – an endeavor that was clearly challenging for Kim – entails unique training and techniques.
To illustrate, in a 15-week course that focused on writing, Ferris (2007) implemented a 4-week ‘‘Approach, Response,
and Follow-up’’ sequence that first focused on global issues. Initially, teachers explored personal theories of written
feedback, discussed principles and guidelines, and practiced providing global feedback. Next, Ferris had a 1-week
training wherein they discussed and practiced providing WCF on local errors. Of course, not all programs have courses
that focus uniquely on L2 writing such as this one. Thus, when unavailable, short workshops that include both a
reflective and practical component could also be beneficial for pre-service teachers.
Moreover, the present study suggests that practicing not only how to offer WCF on local issues but also
experimenting with specific types of local WCF might be helpful for teacher-learners. For instance, despite Kim’s
belief that providing students with explanation and ‘‘models’’ of various linguistic structures could help them
understand what was expected of them, she continued throughout her first semester to provide comprehensive
feedback without explanation on grammar and mechanics. Although research findings regarding the effectiveness of
direct and indirect feedback remains inconclusive (Chandler, 2003), studies examining the benefits of direct feedback
tend to show direct feedback with explanation to be more effective than direct feedback alone (e.g., Bitchener, 2008;
Bitchener & Knoch, 2008; Ellis, 2009; Ellis, Sheen, Murakami, & Takashima, 2008; Sheen, 2007; Shintani & Ellis,
2013). Therefore, in teacher education programs, part of the curriculum should include hands-on practice with
responding to actual student writing, in which teacher-learners would have the opportunity to experiment with offering
‘‘direct feedback with explanation,’’ a more time-consuming WCF type. Given the time constraints they will
experience as L2 writing teachers, this could help pre-service and novice teachers learn to limit the quantity of
feedback and provide more focused and selective commentaries targeting, for example, issues at the global level and
recurring local errors, which could increase accuracy of revised written products as well as lead to potential knowledge
transfer to new pieces of writing.
In conjunction with and before the introduction of hands-on practices, part of the curriculum in teacher training
courses should also encourage pre-service teachers to examine their personal beliefs regarding written teacher
feedback. Reflective teaching is in fact a recommended approach to support the life-long process of professional
development (Richards & Farrell, 2011) given that reflective teaching practices ‘‘provide a means for prospective and
experienced teachers to develop more informed practices, making tacit beliefs and practical knowledge explicit,
articulating what teachers know and leading to new ways of knowing and teaching’’ (Crandall, 2000, p. 40).
Following Ferris (2007), before discussing what research has to say about written teacher feedback, it is important
that pre-service teachers reflect on and discuss their own experiences receiving WCF and what they believe is the best
approach. Journals, for instance, are recommended reflective tools (Richards & Farrell, 2011). In teacher education
courses, journaling and discussions of entries can show pre-service teachers some of the complexities that they and
their peers have experienced. The use of journals in teacher education courses may also foster long-term journaling
practices that can benefit novice teachers as they teach their first courses. In the present study, journaling appears to
have helped Kim uncover some of her own beliefs. During the interviews, Kim explained that keeping a journal might
have contributed to her self-reflectivity on the issue of responding to student writing even if she demonstrated
conflicted feelings about the practice of journaling.
I think it’s [keeping a journal] helping but, at the same time, I think it’s confusing me more [laughs]. [. . .] In
terms of making sure, like, I’m really thinking about what I’m doing, but at the same time I think it may be
confusing me because I have to think so much more. Uh [sighs] I don’t even know if it makes sense. It’s a good
thing; it really is, but I find myself having contradictions when I’m writing the journal. (Interview 1)
Further, Kim, motivated by her self-discoveries, explained how keeping a journal was something that may in fact
become part of her practices in the future.
I wouldn’t have done the journals most likely [if not participating in the study] just because I wouldn’t have done
that. Now, I do plan when I get my first teaching job [. . .] to do a journal for that first year of teaching, but I would
do it about the experience, everything, not just corrective feedback. (Interview 2)
Regarding influences on Kim’s beliefs about written teacher feedback, one important factor that impacted her
appears to have been related to the learning outcomes of the composition program. Kim mentioned that her emphasis
on global concerns was an attempt to meet these learning outcomes and rubrics, but also that she believed these were
important qualities of ‘‘good writers.’’ Accordingly, in teacher educator programs, tasks that require the discussion and
the critique of rubrics may also play an important role for pre-service teachers since noticing which areas of the
students’ writings are being evaluated can also guide the practice of providing feedback.
In sum, there are several initiatives that teacher educators can take to support pre-service teachers. A combination
of explicit discussions of earlier and current SLA theories and their views on errors, hands-on practices providing
feedback on global and local issues and experimenting with specific, time-consuming feedback types, journaling
practices during graduate coursework, and guided discussions of rubrics and curricular goals would lay a strong
foundation for supporting novice teachers as they learn to respond to student writing.
Conclusion
This study investigated the beliefs and decision-making processes of a novice L2 teacher regarding written teacher
response. In this contextualized case study, the teacher, Kim, participated in interviews and kept a reflective journal
during her first semester teaching composition classes to non-native speakers of English at the university level. In
addition, students’ commented-on essays were collected and analyzed by the researchers in order to triangulate the
data and enable us to gain a better understanding of Kim’s practices in responding to her students’ writing.
The findings revealed that Kim held a complex set of beliefs in terms of what should be addressed and how she
should carry out her practices. It was uncovered that Kim was not always able to apply her beliefs to her feedback
practices, and it was also clear that for Kim, although a time-consuming, ‘‘tedious,’’ and ‘‘intimidating’’ task,
providing feedback was crucial for students’ success in improving their writing. Further, she demonstrated a high
level of reflectivity during the interviews and in her journal entries, as she debated and struggled over amounts and
types of feedback to give as well as on issues of her own fairness in grading students’ papers. One of the main tensions
that emerged in Kim’s reflections was exactly the dilemma between following her beliefs or doing what she could
given practical constraints. Of course, beliefs are not static and the dynamism and evolution of teachers’ beliefs as
they gain more experience have been widely documented in teacher cognition research (see Borg, 2006). As Borg
(2009) put it, ‘‘mismatches between teachers’ beliefs and practices should not be a focus of criticism; rather, they
present exciting opportunities for deeper explorations of teachers, their cognitions, their teaching, and the contexts
they work in’’ (p. 167).
While the present study contributes to the field of L2 writing and teacher cognition by taking into account a pre-
service teacher’s practices and beliefs in a naturalistic setting, some limitations are acknowledged. The study focused
uniquely on one pre-service teacher working in one specific context. In a similar vein, data were collected over a single
semester: It would be valuable to examine how teachers transition from pre-service to in-service status. Such
longitudinal data could provide more insights regarding the impact of graduate training on practices. Moreover, it is
important that we continue to look at how teacher written feedback practices might lead to L2 development, which is
undoubtedly one of the main concerns of language teachers.
Nonetheless, we believe that the findings presented point to several insights regarding pedagogical implications for
teacher preparation programs as previously discussed. Needless to say, however, responding to student writing is not a
task that can easily be done in a vacuum and L2 teachers must be responsive to their local realities. Thus, though the
suggestions offered above may not be readily applicable in various contexts given the heavy workload that graduate
students face while completing coursework and teaching assistantships, teacher-training courses could perhaps help
share these burdens by incorporating response to student writing and reflective journals as part of their curricula in
such a way that these hands-on practices count toward pre-service teachers’ course requirements. Graduate teaching
assistants who teach ESL/EFL students during their programs could then receive more direct guidance from
experienced faculty while also having the opportunity to become reflective about their beliefs and develop more
informed practices. For as Casanave (2004) pointedly argues, it is extremely beneficial for teachers to examine their
beliefs in light of their practices as this habit can help teaching ‘‘become more principled, less random, perhaps more
experimental and innovative, more connected to the learning of particular students, and more subject to our own
critical evaluation of techniques, methods, successes, and failures’’ (p. 9).
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Dr. Rosa Manchón, Dr. Christine Tardy, and the anonymous reviewers for their insightful
comments on earlier versions of this article. We are also grateful to Kim for participating in this study and allowing us
to learn from her as she began her journey of responding to student writing.
Appendix A. Interview guide
The interview will be semi-structured so that the participant will have the freedom to elaborate on issues of her
concern/interest regarding corrective feedback, teaching writing, and the writing process itself. This is, therefore, a
tentative guide, and follow-up questions may also be used during the interviews.
Interview Protocol #1
1. How do you make the decisions about responding to your students’ essays? For instance, how do you decide how
much and what type of feedback to give? How long do you take responding to each essay and does your feedback
vary depending on the student? How so?
2. How do you perceive your students as writers?
3. What do you consider important to teach in a writing class for non-native speakers? Are these aspects different from
what you would teach in a writing class for native speakers? Why or why not?
4. What do you hope to accomplish with your corrective feedback? In other words, what do you hope or expect your
students to have gained from your responding to their essays by the end of the semester?
5. How has the semester been going regarding responding to your students’ writing?
6. Have you faced any challenges? Why so?
7. Has writing a journal been helpful to you? Why or why not?
8. Have you changed in any way how you have been responding to your students’ essays? Why or why not?
9. Do you feel that your feedback is helping yours students improve their writing? Why or why not?
Interview Protocol #2
1. How would you assess this semester regarding your corrective feedback practices on students’ papers? Do you feel
they were successful? How so or why not?
2. Were you consistent in your practices of responding to your students’ essays? Did you notice any changes along the
way? If so, how did you change your practice and why?
3. What do you think of the journal activity you did for this research project? Was it helpful in any way?
4. What’s your final evaluation regarding your students’ writing? Do you believe they have improved this semester? Is
this improvement (or lack thereof) related in any way to the corrective feedback you provided? How so?
5. Do you wish you had done anything different in responding to students’ essays? Why?
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Luciana Junqueira is currently an adjunct professor at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Her primary research interests include second
language writing, academic literacies, and genre analysis.
Caroline Payant is an assistant professor of applied linguistics in the MATESL program at the University of Idaho. Her areas of interests include
cognitive and sociocultural aspects of language acquisition as well as teacher education.

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‘‘I just want to do it right, but it’s so hard’’:

A novice teacher’s written feedback beliefs and practices

Research on L2 writing teachers’ WCF practices and beliefs

Teacher cognition research in L2 writing instruction

Participant and context

Data collection procedures

Results and discussion

Kim’s beliefs and practices

Kim’s decision-making processes

‘‘Practical constraints vs. beliefs’’

Appendix A. Interview guide

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