The Students’ Perspectives on Different Forms of Online Corrective Feedback

Abstract

Giving feedback is an integral activity of teaching and learning in any English language courses, especially English writing courses. Due to the effect of Covid-19 pandemic, teachers in educational institutes in Vietnam have used online corrective feedback instead of face-to-face feedback in their online writing classes. This paper explores the use of some specific types of online corrective feedback in an academic writing class taken by 66 second-year undergraduates in the Faculty of English, Hanoi National University of Education. The aim of this study is to have a better insight into students’ attitude towards different forms of online corrective feedback, their difficulties in perceiving the feedback and their expectations for online corrective feedback. To collect data for this study, a survey questionnaire has been used and interviews with the students have been conducted.

The findings of the study could have significant pedagogical and practical implications for the teaching and learning. Firstly, teachers can decide whether they should combine online and face-to-face corrective feedback in face-to-face writing classes when the pandemic is over. Secondly, the findings of the study could provide teachers necessary suggestions so that they could have some appropriate adjustment in using online corrective feedback in the next online writing classes especially when the pandemic has not been under control.

Key words: corrective feedback, online corrective feedback, academic writing, text-based corrective feedback