Corrective written feedback in upper secondary school : A case study comparing teachers’ teaching practices as well as their approaches and preferences towards corrective written feedback

Abstract: The purpose of this paper was to examine what types of feedback, both local/global and direct/indirect corrective written feedback (CWF), teachers gave on students’ compositions. Six teachers, three from China and three from Sweden, took part in the study. The feedback given on the compositions was also compared with teachers’ approaches and preferences towards corrective written feedback to see if there were any similarities and differences in how they used CWF. A qualitative approach was used in the analysis of the data from the students’ compositions, as well as using semi-structured interviews to see if their approaches and preferences matched the teachers’ teaching practices. The overall results of the study concluded that both the Swedish and Chinese teachers focused their error corrections mostly on local errors. The Swedish teachers also made an overall higher percentage of total error corrections than the Chinese teachers. The Chinese teachers marked more global errors than the Swedish teachers, whereas the Swedish teachers marked more local errors. When comparing these results to the six teachers’ approaches and preferences, the Swedish teachers’ answers matched more the written CWF they gave on the students’ compositions than the Chinese teachers. This, therefore, shows that the Swedish teachers have an overall broader understanding of their own use of CWF in terms of their approaches and preferences and the feedback they give on students’ compositions.