Higher-proficiency students’ engagement with and uptake of teacher and Grammarly feedback in an EFL writing course

ABSTRACT

Research on the impact of feedback on students’ writing has grown in the past 20 years, including studies comparing the nature of teacher and automated feedback. Differential success in learners’ gaining from feedback has largely depended on their engagement with the feedback rather than the feedback itself. Studies examining the ways learners engage with different sources of feedback are relatively scarce. This study addresses this gap: it examines Hungarian university students’ behavioral engagement with teacher and automated feedback and their feedback uptake over a 14-week semester in an EFL writing course. Drawing on student texts and feedback from teacher and Grammarly, we identified the focus of feedback and analyzed the students’ revision operations in their revised texts. The results showed differences in feedback focus (the teacher provided form-and meaning-focused feedback) with unexpected outcomes: students’ uptake of feedback resulted in moderate to low levels of engagement with teacher and Grammarly feedback. Participants incorporated more form-focused feedback than meaning-focused feedback into their revisions. These findings contribute to our understanding of students’ engagement with writing tasks, levels of trust, and possible impact of students’ language proficiency on their engagement with feedback. The pedagogical implications from this study are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Student engagement
• feedback uptake
• written feedback
• teacher feedback
• automated feedback
• second language writing

Acknowledgements

We thank the teacher and students who participated in the research. We are grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their valuable and constructive suggestions on earlier drafts of this paper. The first author of this article is a recipient of the Hungarian government's Stipendium Hungaricum Scholarship in collaboration with the Myanmar government.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nang Kham Thi

Nang Kham Thi is a fourth-year Ph.D. student in Doctoral School of Education at the University of Szeged in Hungary. Her main research areas are second language writing, language assessment, and computer-assisted language learning.

Marianne Nikolov

Marianne Nikolov is Professor Emerita of English Applied Linguistics at the University of Pécs, Hungary. Early in her career, she taught English as a foreign language to young learners for 18 years. She taught in B.A. and M.A. TEFL, and Ph.D. courses and is still working with doctoral students. Her research interests include: the age factor, early learning and teaching of modern languages, assessment of processes and outcomes in language education, individual differences such as aptitude, attitudes, and motivation contributing to language development, teacher education, teachers' beliefs and practices, and language policy. Her publications include longitudinal classroom research, large-scale national assessment projects as well as case studies.

Krisztián Simon

Krisztián Simon is an assistant professor in the Department of English Applied Linguistics at the University of Pécs, Hungary. His research interests include e-learning, blended learning, content development, language teaching, and teacher training.