Understanding teachers’ written feedback practices in Hong Kong secondary classrooms

Much of L2 teacher feedback research is conducted with advanced students in process-oriented classrooms in the United States. There is less published research about how school teachers in EFL contexts respond to student writing. Specifically little is known about why teachers respond to writing in the ways they do, and if discrepancies exist between teachers’ feedback practices and recommended principles, the reasons that may account for the disjuncture. The present study serves to fill these gaps by examining the written feedback provided by 26 Hong Kong secondary English teachers to 174 student texts, followed up by interviews with 6 of the teachers to find out the factors that have influenced their responding practices. The findings indicate that teachers’ written feedback occurred in single-draft classrooms and was primarily error-focused, contravening the principles recommended in local curriculum documents. The interview data highlight four important issues that shed light on teachers’ feedback practices: accountability, teachers’ beliefs and values, exam culture, and (lack of) teacher training. It is concluded that teachers’ feedback practices are influenced by a myriad of contextual factors including teachers’ beliefs, values, understandings, and knowledge, which are mediated by the cultural and institutional contexts, such as philosophies about feedback and attitude to exams, and socio-political issues pertaining to power and teacher autonomy.