A Study On English-Majors’ Attitudes And Preferences For Teacher Written Feedback In BFL Writing

English writing is one of the most important and basic skills in English learningfor college students, especially for English-majors. Teacher written feedback is animportant part in teaching English writing, effective teacher feedback can improveand enhance students’ writing proficiency, and students’ attitudes, reactions andpreference in return can affect the validity of teacher written feedback (Schulz,1996). The research on students’ attitudes, reactions and preferences to teacherwritten feedback started in1990s abroad, and most of the studies were conducted inESL context. The related research in China is relatively little and not comprehensive.The present study aims to explore English-majors’ attitudes, reactions andpreferences in teacher written feedback. Three research questions are addressed:1) What are students’ attitudes and reactions towards teacher feedback? Arethere any difference between different writing-level students?2) What types of teacher feedback do students believe most useful in helpingthem improve their writing?3) Do the students’ perceptions of their teachers’ actual practices on providingthe priority systems of teacher feedback match their own preferences to the prioritysystem of teacher feedback in writing evaluation?The study investigates200third-year English majors from Gannan NormalUniversity by conducting a questionnaire and interviews. The findings obtained by theanalysis of the questionnaire data using SPSS17.0and the analyses of the interviewsare as follows:1) The majority of the students think their teachers should providemore feedback on content, organization and grammar. And there is no significantdifference in this respect between excellent writing students and poor writing students;2) The majority of the students think teacher feedbacks are useful and among them thecontent-focused teacher feedback is the most useful in improving their writing. Thereis no significant difference in most aspects between excellent writing students and poor writing students, except in the beliefs of the usefulness of grammar in improvingtheir writings. Excellent writing students are not strong proponents for the correctionof grammar, they think they can learn the most from feedback on content, while poorwriting students think they can learn the most from teachers’ feedback on grammar；3) Most students claim that their perceptions of their teachers’ actual practices onproviding the priority system of teacher feedback match their own preferences to thepriority system of teacher feedback in writing evaluation. As for the excellent writingstudents, their perceptions of their teachers’ actual practices on providing the prioritysystem of teacher feedback match their own preferences to the priority system ofteacher feedback, but the poor writing students claim not.Finally, the limitations of the present research are discussed and some advice forfuture research is made. It is suggested that further research should investigate a widerrange of students with more varied learning backgrounds to provide a morecomprehensive picture of students’ attitude and preference to teacher feedback. It isalso desirable for future research to combine a survey study with classroomobservation, and consider more factors that may affect students’ attitude andpreference, such as students’ motivation, personality, learning style, age.