Written feedback in Japanese EFL classrooms: A focus on content and organization

Year 2014, Volume: 4 Issue: 1, 55 - 68, 14.07.2016

Neil Heffernan Junko Otoshi Yoshitaka Kaneko

Abstract

The exact nature of written feedback to L2 learners of English is often vague to both the teachers who provide it and the learners who receive it. However, this does not have to be the case. This paper describes a study carried out with 16 Japanese and 14 native English speaker EFL teachers in Japan who provided feedback on one L2 learners’ academic essay. After analyzing and coding the feedback, the researchers found that the most common form of feedback given on the essay was in relation to the content and organization of the essay. Five of these teachers were subsequently interviewed in order to elicit their beliefs about the nature of feedback they gave on the learners’ essay. The findings suggest a need for EFL teachers in Japan to specifically focus on teaching how learners can attend to the content and organization of an essay, all the while providing a rubric or checklist that allows for a transparent and easy to understand method of decoding the feedback process for our learners.

Keywords

Feedback, Japanese EFL writers, content, organization, checklist

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