ELECTRONIC FEEDBACK: IS IT BENEFICIAL FOR SECOND LANGUAGE WRITERS?

JOURNAL: TEACHING ENGLISH WITH TECHNOLOGY
JOURNAL FOR TEACHERS OF ENGLISH
VOLUME 8, ISSUE 3 (JULY 2008)

AUTHOR: LILIAN FARAG ALLAH
She is a lecturer at Writing Center of the American University in Cairo (AUC), Cairo, Egypt.

E-MAIL: lilimina@aucegypt.edu

ARTICLE LINK: http://www.iaetfl.org.pl/call/j_article32htm

SUMMARY

This article is focusing on the application of electronic feedback or e-feedback in second language writers’ writing work in which as an alternative over the traditional way of feedback. Not only that, this paper also aims to see how e-feedback can provide better teaching and learning environment for second language writer (SLW) that resulting to a better essay or writing work in the future. This article does not have specific methodology as it is a paper that compiles several references from recent studies conducted by various researchers pertaining to the usage of e-feedback. Besides that, this paper also provides some classroom practices that can be applied by the language teacher in their teaching relating to e-feedback on their students’ writing works. These studies and classroom practices have been previously conducted and experimented by the researchers and it has the reliability aspect taken into consideration. Therefore, as this paper is based on reviews from various researches been done, there is no specific subject and sample been used. The subject and sample will be the one that been used by the researchers that conduct the research on e-feedback itself which been the second language learners from various proficiency level. From the compilation of reviews of studies done before, there are various findings that can be concluded out of the research result. Out of various findings, the two core findings that seem to be crucial will be the type and focus of e-feedback comments focusing on peer feedback basis and changes and improvements in later drafts. For the first finding, that is the type and focus of e-feedback comments, it shown that the quality of comments has been developed. For the quality of the comments, the comments given by the students to their peer’s work seem to be more on cognitive feedback than social feedback. Cognitive feedback means that the comments given related closely to the topic given for the essay’s task and the comments also seem to be more constructive and critical pertaining to the development of further draft. Then, balancing the quality aspect, another aspect will be the quantity of the comments. The quantity of the comments means that the length and the numbers of comment improved by using the e-feedback medium. The results showed that students provide lengthier and larger number of comments in e-feedback compared to the traditional feedback medium. The comments given also seem to be more revision-oriented and focus-oriented towards the writing task in a way that seems to improve the later drafts. Moving on to the second finding, it is more effective for the SLW to receive feedback from e-feedback and face-to-face feedback in order for the students improves better. But then, it shown that e-feedback seem to be more based on ‘surface-level’ comments, rather than ‘deep-level’ comments, meaning that it just be focus on the grammar and mechanical aspects rather than the deeper meaning and comprehension of the writing task.

REACTION

Based on my reading, this article is able to attract my interest on the current era of globalization and computer advancement. It is because the field of study for the research is like a new thing for me because I have only been exposed to the traditional feedback medium before this. Even during my study as TESL student, I do realize the importance of feedback to the SLW in order to enhance their writing skills. Hence, e-feedback seem to be more beneficial to SLW as it will be like an addition to the traditional feedback medium whereby the students can have both medium at the same time of learning the language. It is because, in nowadays world, everyone is connected with unlimited coverage of computer technology and Internet, in which enable SLW to interact with their teacher or peers in order for them to improve their writing tasks and drafts. But then, even with various reviews on recent studies on e-feedback, I perceived that this article can be improve more if the author herself conduct a mini-research or case study on the use of e-feedback using her own methodology and sample of recipients. By doing so, I believed that the findings will be more valid and reliable as the author herself observe and collect the data rather than just relying on other researchers’ studies. But then, this article still has its own strength in term of the implication that can be considered by the teachers for their future teaching. It is because the usage of e-feedback and how the impact of applying this medium towards SLW shows lots of improvisation rather than the decrement of the students’ performance. Not only that, from Malaysian contexts, I believe that by applying e-feedback towards SLW, it will be able to gauge interest and attention of the students in learning the language better because Malaysian students nowadays seem to be updated with the computer advancement in line with the borderless world era.