Faculty feedback: Perceptions and practices in L2 disciplinary writing

•Students are writing-to-learn disciplinary content and rhetoric.•Interviews with 20 faculty at a Hong Kong university identify these perceptions.•Faculty not focused on accuracy or content but disciplinary argument patterns.•EAP teachers can benefit by understanding faculty views and practices.

While a great deal of the research on feedback given to second language writers focuses narrowly on what goes on in language classrooms, most of the writing that matters to undergraduates occurs in disciplinary contexts. Students are attending academic writing courses to more effectively participate in the debates of their disciplines and to demonstrate their learning to readers in those disciplines. They are ‘Writing to Learn’ rather than ‘Learning to Write’, yet we often know little about the advice faculty give to students or what they are trying to achieve through their feedback. The study seeks to move L2 writing feedback studies beyond the texts produced for teachers in the writing classroom while contributing to our understanding of students’ attempts to write themselves into their disciplines. Drawing on interviews with 20 teachers from four faculties at an English medium university in Hong Kong, I explore their perceptions of feedback to illuminate students’ experiences of disciplinary writing. Overall, the findings show that faculty teachers’ feedback is shaped by a desire to see students write in disciplinary approved ways, yet only infrequently supports students towards this goal.