Investigating The Effects Of Writing Self-Efficacy And Learner Engagement With Written Corrective Feedback On L2 Writing Performance In Chinese Junior High School

Second Language(L2)writing,a complex process of conveying a writer’s thoughts,feelings and messages,is easily influenced by various kinds of factors.Thus,it’s of great significance to examine potential indicators of it.In the field of L2 writing,writing self-efficacy plays an essential role in affecting all phases of composing process.Written corrective feedback(WCF),known as a pedagogical technique,has been widely used by English teachers.Learner engagement with WCF,generally defined as the extent of students’ involvement in responding to WCF,is serving as an important indicator to predict writing performance.Also,it has increasingly gained its prominence in L2 writing.The above three factors are hypothesized as important elements in L2 writing.Based on the classification of WCF by Ellis(2009),the framework of learner engagement with WCF proposed by Han and Hyland(2015)and the model of writing self-efficacy in EFL context proposed by L.S.Teng et al(2017),this study intends to not only investigate the relationship among writing self-efficacy,learner engagement and L2 writing,but also compare predictive effects of specific variables against each other and elicit the role of each of them in affecting L2 writing.Furthermore,ways for effects of writing self-efficacy and learner engagement with WCF on L2 writing performance would also be explored.Junior high school students are selected as research participants.The research questions are as follows:(1)What are the relationship among students’ L2 writing self-efficacy,learner engagement with written corrective feedback(WCF)and L2 writing performance?(2)What are the contributions of writing self-efficacy and learner engagement with WCF as well as written corrective feedback on L2 writing performance?(3)In what ways do writing self-efficacy and learner engagement with WCF affect L2 writing performance?In order to figure out the above research questions,70 Grade nine students are randomly selected as the research participants.A mixed methods approach is adopted for this study,including qualitative and quantitative research methods.The instruments include two questionnaires of writing self-efficacy and learner engagement with WCF,written text analysis and retrospective interview to obtain reliable data.All the collected data are analyzed by SPSS 26.0,and the following results are obtained:(1)There is a medium correlation among writing self-efficacy,learner engagement with WCF and L2 writing performance.On the other hand,although both writing self-efficacy and learner engagement with WCF have no correlation with writing complexity,the former is slightly related with writing accuracy.(2)Learner engagement affects writing self-efficacy positively and both of them are positive predictors of L2 writing performance and the former exerts a bigger impact on it.Furthermore,contributions of writing self-efficacy,learner engagement with WCF and written corrective feedback on L2 writing can be summarized as followings:Initially,writing self-efficacy could influence L2 writing performance and writing accuracy positively.Also,it can negatively and slightly affect syntactic complexity.By contrast,learner engagement only has predictive power on L2 writing performance.And behavioral engagement could exert tiny impact on writing accuracy.Similarly,written corrective feedback could help to improve writing accuracy dramatically but fail to impact complexity.However,WCF cannot impact L2 writing performance directly.(3)Affected by different features and students’ personal preferences towards different kinds of written corrective feedback,learner engagement with WCF could exert an impact on writing self-efficacy and then affect L2 writing performance as well.Students with high levels of writing self-efficacy,learner engagement with WCF and L2 writing performance prefer reformulation(FR)and indirect feedback(FID)while students with low levels prefer explicit feedback such as direct feedback(FD).Based on the above findings,this study puts forward some implications for providing WCF and eliciting high level of learner engagement with WCF and writing self-efficacy in L2 writing instruction.English teachers should recognize the multivariable regression relationship among learner engagement with WCF,writing self-efficacy and L2 writing,meanwhile,employ WCF on the basis of students’ different levels of writing self-efficacy and learner engagement as well as features of each type of feedback.