PREPARATION GAP BETWEEN HIGH SCHOOL AND FIRST-YEAR UNIVERSITY WRITING PRACTICES: THE ISSUE OF CORRECTIVE FEEDBACK PROVISION

Back to Page Authors: Omar Adra, Maria Habboushi

Keywords: corrective feedback, teacher feedback in high school, teacher feedback in first-year university, focus on form or content

Abstract: Ways to approach corrective feedback given to L2 writing students have revolved around two opposing binaries: form and content. Arguments for form-focused feedback include highlighting how feedback helps students in the process of revision, leading to grammatical accuracy, and that both stakeholders - students and teachers - value error feedback and written accuracy. Calls for the abandonment of grammar correction in L2 classes have not been settled, and a disagreement on whether feedback should be form-focused or content-based is still cited in the literature. Focus on lower-order concerns is believed to make teacher feedback too punitive and student writing rather mechanic thus discouraging the development of student's voice. To investigate the existence of continuity between high school and university writing programs and as evidenced in the practices of teaching writing particularly in the area of corrective feedback provision, a survey was administered to 219 first-year students in two private universities in north Lebanon, whose student populations differ in terms of socio-economic and educational backgrounds. Moreover, a focus group of 8 students in each university was administered to further shed light on the issue. Results from the mixed-methods study of these first-year university students reporting on the feedback they received in high school writing classes compared to that they received in university writing courses reveal that there is no statistical significance in the type of feedback they received except for teacher feedback being positive and negative. Data from the focus groups revealed the area of corrective feedback teachers in high schools and universities generally gave more importance to did show a slight discrepancy.