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System 41 (2013) 625e638

A case study of an EFL writing teacher’s belief and practice aboutwritten feedback

Hui-Tzu Min*

Department of Foreign Languages and Literature, National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan

Received 4 October 2012; revised 16 July 2013; accepted 22 July 2013

Available online

Abstract

This study reports an EFL writing teacher/researcher’s self-study of her beliefs and practices about how to provide writtenfeedback. She critically examined entries of her reflection journal, learning log, and written comments to reflect on her beliefs andpractices over time. A content analysis of the journal and log entries revealed four guiding principles underlining her beliefs abouthow to give feedback at the beginning of the semester. They were clarifying writers’ intentions, identifying problems, explainingproblems, and making specific suggestions. These principles underwent a hierarchical change toward the end of the semester. Thisstructural change instigated a corresponding priority shift in her commentse from fixing students’ problems to understanding theirintentions. A quantitative analysis showed congruity between her beliefs and practices at the beginning and end of the semester.Reasons for this congruity included public articulation and demonstration of her beliefs in class and increasing proceduralknowledge about how to provide feedback.� 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: EFL writing teacher’s feedback beliefs; Feedback practice; Procedural knowledge; Teacher’s self-study

1. Introduction

In their introduction to a special issue of Journal of Second Language Writing on L2 writing teacher education,Hirvela and Belcher (2007) noted a lack of attention to teacher education among L2 writing scholars. Indeed, few“public spaces” have been carved out for “the teacher education realm of the L2 writing field” (p. 126). Even fewerspaces have been devoted to the beliefs1/perceptions and practices of written feedback among writing teachers whoteach English as a second/foreign language (ESL/EFL) (Lee, 2009) despite a wealth of studies on forms and functionsof L2 teacher feedback (Conrad and Goldstein, 1999) and their impact on student perceptions (Lee, 2008; Tsui andNg, 2000) and revisions (Paulus, 1999).

* Tel.: þ011 886 6 2757575x52238; fax: þ011 886 6 2387730.

E-mail address: minhuitz@mail.ncku.edu.tw.1 Researchers have vehemently debated over the meanings of teacher beliefs and knowledge. The intention to separate the two cognitive

constructs, although theoretically important, seems less practical due to the intertwined relationships between them in a teacher’s mind. In this

study, the author employed a pragmatic position by treating teacher knowledge and beliefs as points on a continuum of meaning, with the

awareness that beliefs are more value-laden and knowledge more proposition-oriented (Meijer et al., 2001).

0346-251X/$ - see front matter � 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2013.07.018

626 H.-T. Min / System 41 (2013) 625e638

Examining ESL/EFL writing teachers’ beliefs about and practices of written feedback is important becauseteachers are active thinkers who have potential for a theory “with a small t” based on their own practices (Atkinson,2010: 13). This locally constructed theory can not only validate but also inform L2 writing theories. In addition,examining ESL/EFL writing teachers’ feedback beliefs can provide writing researchers and teachers with a lens intothe underlying principles of the latter’s practices, given the close connection between teachers’ beliefs and practices(Burns, 1992). This insight is critical because ESL/EFL writing teachers’ beliefs can influence their feedback onstudents’ writing, which, in turn, is likely to shape their students’ self-perceived writing efficacy (Hedgcock andLefkowitz, 1994), revision and writing quality (Tsui and Ng, 2000). For these reasons, this case study examined anEFL writing teacher’s beliefs about how to provide written feedback and her practices in a writing class at the uni-versity level in Taiwan over a semester.

2. Literature review

2.1. Research on L2 language teachers’ beliefs

Research in the field of L2 language teachers’ cognition views L2 language teachers as active thinkers who havetheir own beliefs about language learning and various teaching techniques. These beliefs may be a result of teachers’prior learning experiences (Lortie, 1975), may function as a lens through which new information is filtered (Pajares,1992), can exert an influence on their actual practices in the language classroom (Borg, 2001; Breen et al., 2001) andbe influenced by classroom practices (Richardson, 1996).

2.2. ESL/EFL writing teachers’ and their students’ beliefs about written feedback

Researchers comparing and contrasting ESL/EFL writing teachers’ feedback beliefs with students’ beliefs andperceptions have identified that teachers and students share similar beliefs and perceptions about feedback(Montgomery and Baker, 2007; Schulz, 2001). For example, Schulz (2001: 252) found that most Columbian EFLteacher and student participants (93% and 98% respectively) concurred that students wanted their teachers to providewritten feedback when making errors in writing. Montgomery and Baker (2007) found that students’ perceptions ofthe quantities of micro and macro written CF received were consistent with their ESL writing teachers’ self-assessment. Others reported discrepancies in teachers’ and students’ beliefs about the amount and types of writtenfeedback that teachers should give and students should receive (Amrhein and Nassaji, 2008; Diab, 2005). Amrheinand Nassaji (2008) found that almost 94% of the ESL student participants wanted their teachers to correct all oftheir errors, but only 45% of the teacher respondents upheld the same belief. Diab (2005) reported that an ESL writingteacher believed that students did not attend to her feedback on final drafts and thus tended to give less feedback. Butone of her students considered it important to receive feedback on final drafts.

For the few studies that have focused on ESL/EFL writing teachers’ feedback beliefs and practices, mismatcheshave been often reported. Lee (2009) found that institutional constraints may be a likely factor for 10 noticeablemismatched beliefs and reported practices among two groups of EFL writing teachers at the secondary level in HongKong. These discrepancies manifested in areas such as essential aspects of good writing, appropriate and effectiveapproaches to error feedback, numbers of revision required, and responsibility for correction. Most teachers, wheninterviewed by the researcher, considered local English panel policy demanding them to mark errors as the mainreason for the discrepancies in their feedback beliefs and practices.

Montgomery and Baker (2007), in the same study where they found shared teachers’ and students’ perceptions ofcorrective feedback, noted considerable discrepancies between teachers’ self-report perceptions of and their actualcomments on local and global issues in students’ writing. Most reported in the questionnaire that they gave much morefeedbackonglobal issues and far less on local ones.Yet the researchers’ textual analysesdisclosed a differentpicture.Onlytwo gave extensive comments on macro issues and the rest (87%) focused on micro issues, even on students’ first drafts.

2.3. Critique of studies on ESL/EFL writing teachers’ beliefs and practices

A perusal of the existing literature on ESL/EFL writing teachers’ beliefs and practices reveals two problematicissues. One relates to possible causes of mismatched beliefs and practices, and the other, research method used to

627H.-T. Min / System 41 (2013) 625e638

examine these causes. A possible reason for the previously-reported mismatched beliefs/perceptions and practice isthat those ESL/EFL writing teachers lacked procedural knowledge about how to apply their newly acquired technicalknowledge from research. Ellis (1998) argued that researchers’ technical knowledge “exists in a declarative form” and“cannot easily be applied off-the-shelf in the kind of rapid decision making needed in day-to-day living” (p. 40).2 Inthe case of ESL/EFL writing teachers’ learning the principles of teacher response advocated by L2 writing re-searchers, they need to know how to proceduralize their technical or declarative (Anderson, 2007) knowledge so thatthey can put it into everyday practice. Yet very little is known about how ESL/EFL writing teachers translate theirtechnical/declarative knowledge into practical/procedural one.

Although little information is available on what contributes to the alignment between ESL/EFL writing teachers’beliefs and practices, research on L2 language teachers’ cognition has suggested that experience may play a role(Basturkmen et al., 2004). In line with this reasoning, one might wonder if those ESL writing teachers “recentlyadmitted into the TESOL master’s program” in Montgomery and Baker’s (2007: 86) study knew how to make writtencommentary despite their awareness of the principles of teacher response advocated by L2 writing researchers. In asimilar vein, one may also question the ability of those EFL writing teachers who “expressed their concern about theinefficacy of their feedback” but “continued with their existing written feedback practice” in Lee’s study (Lee, 2009:18). Had they known how to make effective comments, would they have continued practicing their ineffectivemethods? It is likely that both groups of ESL/EFL writing teachers may have been aware of the technical knowledge(principles of teacher response promoted by L2 writing researchers) but may have lacked specific proceduralknowledge about how to apply this technical knowledge to their particular writing contexts. Lee’s (2008) finding thatinadequate training was one major reason for some EFL writing teachers’ continual use of error feedback lendssupport to this interpretation.

Regarding the research method used to examine ESL/EFL writing teachers’ beliefs and practices, most researchersfollowed the traditional positivist research paradigm where they studied ESL/EFL writing teachers’ beliefs at a certainpoint in time via questionnaires and interviews. Three questions lie with this line of research. First, this type ofresearch sends an unwanted message to ESL/EFL writing teachers that only writing researchers can help them un-derstand their beliefs and practices and make suggestions for pedagogical improvements. Second, given teachers’concerns for “social desirability”, they “might be reluctant to endorse a professionally unpopular belief” or “feignendorsement of items perceived to be ‘correct’” (Kagan, 1990: 427) upon being required to reflect on and evaluatetheir feedback practices. Finally, examining ESL/EFL writing teachers’ perceptions and beliefs at a certain point intime sheds little light on how their beliefs are formed and developed or the extent to which these beliefs shape theirpractices in different time periods. To better understand the sources and development of ESL/EFL writing teachers’beliefs about and practices of how to makewritten feedback, it is necessary to report them at different points in time byutilizing a different method.

3. The study

Given that no research has examined EFL writing teachers’ beliefs about and practices of how to provide writtenfeedback in a longitudinal manner and that L2 writing scholars have called for writing teachers’ critical self-inquiry oftheir written feedback practices (Ferris, 2007; Goldstein, 2010), this study aimed to report the writing teacher/re-searcher’s beliefs about and practices of how to make written feedback.

Different from the previous research in which writing researchers critically examined other ESL/EFL writingteachers’ beliefs and practices, the teacher/researcher of this study, an adherent of reflective practice (Schon, 1983),scrutinized her own feedback beliefs and practices. She adopted the teacher-researcher method by systematically andintentionally examining her own classroom work (Cochran-Smith and Lytle, 1993). The case study reported here ispart of a larger project where she trained her students to perform peer review. She designed a procedural facilitator tohelp students make revision-oriented written commentary during the peer review training. The procedural facilitatormainly functioned as a checklist for the students, requesting them to follow four procedural steps while providingfeedback: Clarifying writers’ intentions, identifying potential problems, explaining the nature of the problems, andmaking specific suggestions. Each step represented the probing, prescriptive, tutoring, and collaborating stance

2 Ellis (1998) argued that “the distinction between technical and practical knowledge. is analogous with the distinction.between declarative

and procedural L2 knowledge, both of which are common in the SLA literature” (p. 40).

628 H.-T. Min / System 41 (2013) 625e638

reported in the literature respectively (Lockhart and Ng, 1995; Mangelsdorf and Schlumberger, 1992; Mendonca andJohnson, 1994; Villamil and De Guerrero, 1996).

Arguably, these procedural steps reflected her beliefs about how to make written feedback then. What is unclearwas the formation process of this procedural belief as well as the connection between her beliefs and feedbackpractices. She wished to report the process and compare her feedback practices with her beliefs at the beginning (priorto the peer review training) and the end (after the peer review training) of the writing class. The research questions areformulated as follows:

1. What were her beliefs about how to make written comments at the beginning of the writing class?2. Did her feedback practice match her beliefs?3. What were her beliefs about how to make written comments at the end of the writing class?4. Did her feedback practice match her beliefs?

4. Method

4.1. Participants

The writing teacher/researcher under focus received her doctoral degree from a Midwestern University in theUnited States. She took one course in her graduate studies, “Writing Studies I” where she learned the cognitivemodel of writing process (Flower and Hayes, 1981). Since graduation, she has taught academic essay writing toEnglish majors at a university in Taiwan for 7 years. This experience helped her understand distinctive featuresof ESL writers’ compositions discussed in L2 writing research (Silva, 1993) and possible contributorysources such as L2 proficiency (Mohan and Lo, 1985) and rhetoric conventions in students’ L1 writing (Connor,1996; Hinds, 1987, 1990). She considered writing in English for academic purposes a linguistic, cognitive,expressive, social, cultural, and developmental process, necessitating a multidimensional approach (Kucer andSilva, 2006).

The students participating in this research were 18 sophomores English majors in her writing class, comprising 16females and 2 males, with an age average of 19. All were native speakers of Mandarin Chinese and had passed theIntermediate Level English Test of the General English Proficiency Test (GEPT) administered by the LanguageTraining and Testing Center in Taiwan before being admitted to the university. Their English proficiency wasapproximately between 523 and 550 on the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) exam.

4.2. Writing class

The focus of this writing course was to develop students’ expository essay writing skills. The class met two times aweek for 18 weeks, which constituted four writing cycles with each lasting one month. In each writing cycle, studentswere required to brainstorm, draft, discuss, revise, present to the class their ideas on each of the following four topics,and make written and oral feedback on classmates’ writing. The four topics were The advantages/disadvantages of_____ (a new technical invention), How to Prevent Environmental Pollution, Factors contributing to X’s success, andAn Analysis of an Incident of Cross-Cultural Misunderstanding. They needed to search for credible information andquote it to substantiate their opinions in their one-page essays. The writing teacher/researcher provided commentaryon students’ 2nd and 3rd drafts of each topic to avoid her influence on student reviewers’ comments on the 1st draftsand writers’ perceptions of their peers’ comments. To help students make revision-oriented comments, she conducted2 2-h peer review training sessions in class and 2 20-min teacherestudent conferences with each student after classduring the 2nd and 3rd writing cycles.

4.3. Data collection procedure

Thewriting teacher/researcher collected two sets of data-one related to her beliefs and the other to her practice. Theformer consisted of her learning log and reflection journal entries, which provided a lens to her beliefs during thecourse of the semester. Regarding her written feedback, a research assistant made copies of her comments on the 2nd

629H.-T. Min / System 41 (2013) 625e638

drafts of students’ first and last compositions. The purpose of examining her comments on students’ first and lastwriting pieces was to compare and contrast her practices with written feedback prior to the peer review training at thebeginning of the writing class and after the training at the end of the writing class. The teacher’s comments on thesetwo topics, although varying in content, were comparable in that she followed the same questions on the guidancesheets she provided with students.

4.4. Data coding and analysis

4.4.1. Qualitative analysisThe writing teacher/researcher conducted both qualitative and quantitative analyses. For the first and third

questions addressing her beliefs about how to make written commentary at the beginning and end of the semester,the analysis was mainly a qualitative one. Two trained independent raters,3 unaware of the purpose of this research,and the writing teacher/researcher perused the latter’s learning log and reflection journal entries, identified andnumbered entries related to feedback beliefs in the reflection journal and learning log according to the chronologicalorder, and calculated the total of each respectively. For example, the 6th reflection journal entry was marked with RJ-6, followed by the month, date, and year of the entry recorded (3/22/05). The same method was used with eachlearning log (LL) entry. They then employed constant-comparative method (Erickson, 1986) to analyze each entry.First they read 10 reflection journal and learning log entries, classified the beliefs respectively, and compared theresults. If there was a difference in opinion, the result would be the one shared by two raters. For example, afterreading an entry in the reflection journal “.I don’t want them to wonder what to do with their writing after readingmy comments. I need to be specific with my suggestions... (RJ-6 3/22/05)), two raters (including the researcher)thought the specificity was made in reference to making suggestions, while the other one coded this entry as the EFLwriting teacher’s general belief in the importance of being specific in her comments. Through discussion, theyagreed that the result would be the one shared by two raters and treated this instance as a disagreement among thethree coders. Then the three raters exchanged opinions on how they coded each entry to further calibrate theirstandards. After the “norming” session, the three raters proceeded to rate the remaining entries. There was no case inwhich each had a different opinion on a single entry. Interrater reliability (based on the percentage of agreement) forthe entries was .83.4 See Appendix 1 for coding categories and examples.

One thing needs to be clarified is that the learning log and reflection journal were originally were kept for thewriting teacher/researcher’s records of and reflections on her thoughts about general writing instruction and peerreview training. The decision to use them as data for this study was a post hoc act. This decision avoided “datacontamination”, which may have resulted if the researcher had planned in advance to use the journals for this research(Numrich, 1996).

4.4.2. Quantitative analysisFor research questions two and four which addressed the relationship between the writing teacher/researcher’s

belief and actual practice, the analysis was principally a quantitative textual one. The raters carefully read eachsentence in the writing teacher/researcher’s comments and tried to identify the guiding principles. The unit ofanalysis was a sentence, bound by an initial capital letter and an ending period. Most of the time the writingteacher/researcher’ comments took the form of multiple sentences, with one sentence identifying a perceivedproblem and the rest explaining the problem or making specific suggestions. Under such circumstances, the raterswould code the sentence identifying the problem as “problem” and group together sentences explaining theproblem and making specific suggestions under two intentions “explanation” and “suggestion”. Comments likethese were considered containing three guiding principles with each indicating a prescriptive, tutoring, andcollaborative stance respectively. Finally, they tallied the total of each guiding principle in her comments on the2nd drafts of students’ 1st and last essays. An example of applying this coding scheme to her comments is pre-sented below

3 These two independent raters, one post-doctoral researcher and one doctoral student majoring in L2 writing, were both experienced EFL

writing teachers and have worked with the researcher for three years.4 Of the 82 reflection journal and learning log entries about the author’s feedback beliefs, the three raters agreed on 68 of them. The interrater

agreement is 68/82 ¼ .83. No instance where the researcher’s coding differed from those of the other two occurred.

Comment: The following sentence doesn’t form a contrast to the past. [identifying problems, prescriptive] I expect to read that cell

phones nowadays don’t have those drawbacks mentioned previously due to the advance in telecommunication rather than the

fact that cell phones become a necessity. [explanation, tutoring] You might want to add a sentence or two saying that the

drawbacks of cell phones in the old days have been improved and thus they become a necessity. [suggestion, collaborative]

630 H.-T. Min / System 41 (2013) 625e638

The two independent raters and the writing teacher/researcher coded three randomly selected comments for initialcoding and then compared the results. Similar to the coding principle of reflection journal and learning log, if therewas a difference in opinion, the result would be the one shared by two raters. Interrater reliability (based on thepercentage of agreement) for the constituents was .91.

One might wonder the researcher’s role versus that of the two independent coders in this study. Aware of theteacher/researchers’ potential subjectivity in analyzing the journal and learning log entries as well as her owncomments, the inclusion of the two independent raters’ judgment was to ensure a systematic and objective coding andcategorizing of the qualitative and quantitative data, thereby decreasing the subjectivity of the analysis.5 The teacher/researcher’s roles were multiple. In addition to that of an informant and data analyst, she was also a reporter andinterpreter of the findings based on such systematic data analyses.

5. Results

The writing teacher/researcher’s learning log was replete with notes of and responses to professional journal ar-ticles and presentations at domestic and international conferences. The reflection journal, in contrast, contained re-flections on student learning difficulty and her teaching styles as well as self-appraisals of her writing instructionalapproaches. Given the focus of this study, the following sections centered on her beliefs on feedback provision. Table 1shows the number of entries specifically related to her beliefs about how to make written feedback.

There were 83 entries about the writing teacher/researcher’s feedback beliefs. Five guiding principles recurred inher reflection journal and learning log: specificity, understanding students’ intentions, identifying problems,explaining problems and making suggestions. Except for “understanding students’ intentions”, the frequency ofoccurrence of the other four guiding principles did not differ much between her initial and later beliefs.

5.1. Feedback belief at the beginning

At the beginning of the writing class, the writing teacher/researcher mainly relied on guiding principles such as“identifying students’ problems” (n ¼ 11), “making specific suggestions” (n ¼ 10) and “giving explanations”(n ¼ 10). The following learning log entry revealed her belief about the importance of explanation to students theirproblems in her comments (LL-7 3/22/05). She thought that her explanations could help students foster a betterunderstanding of their problems and leave a trace in their working memory.

5 One

that th

.remember to explain to students why their writing is

problematic.. they can better understand their problems

and have a deeper impression about them... hopefully

they can avoid them [problems] next time..

Related to her feedback belief about explanation was the concept of specificity.She thought that providing students with specific suggestions was a way both to reduce students’ feelings of

helplessness and to show her personal care for improving their writing (RJ-10 3/29/05):

If I just point out the problems, they probably won’t have a clue

as to what to do. I need to show them how to fix these problems,

so they won’t feel helpless.

may be concerned that this systematic and objective coding undermined the researcher’s role as an informant. This did not happen given

e teacher/researcher’s coding and interpretation were always in sync with at least one coder and thus validated.

Table 1

A breakdown of journal entries on the guiding principles in written commentary.

Guiding principles Frequency

Initial beliefs Later beliefs

Specificity 5 2

Understanding students’ intentions 5 12

Identifying problems 11 9

Explaining problems 10 8

Making suggestions 10 11

Total 41 42

631H.-T. Min / System 41 (2013) 625e638

Despite her feedback beliefs about the importance of explanation and specificity, she did not exactly know how toapply to her practice the principle of specificity advocated by L2 writing researchers. The following excerpt indicatedher confusion about this technical knowledge (LL-11 3/27/05):

Table 2

Constit

Constit

Clarify

Identif

Explain

Making

What did they mean by “comments which could only have

been written on this particular essay” (Ferris et al.,1997: 167)?

It says nothing about how specific my comments should be.

She tried to translate this technical knowledge into identifiable procedural steps (LL-14 4/5/05):

Maybe I can explain what their problematic word choice or

sentence means and what they intend to mean.. or I can just

imitate Ferris et al. by asking students to ‘explain and illustrate’

their ideas..

While the beliefs about giving specific explanations and suggestions were helpful to students in general, she did notrealize that they were operative from the perspective of a responsivewriting teacher who primarily focused on students’texts and functioned as a trouble shooter, identifying, explaining, and fixing problems. Comparatively fewer entrieswere made about understanding students’ intentions (n ¼ 5), not because she deemed it unimportant, but because shethought she understood them, given the same language and cultural background she shared with her students.

5.2. Relationship between initial feedback belief and practice at the beginning

She made 197 comments on students’ first essay. As shown in Table 2, out of the 197 comments, she probedstudents’ intentions only half of the time when making comments (51%). In contrast, she identified problems in 180comments (95%), explained the problems in 130 comments (71%), and made specific suggestions in 163 comments(86%). In general, she practiced the beliefs about identifying and explaining problems as well as giving specificsuggestions 81% of the time in average at the beginning of the writing class.

The following comments on the introductory paragraph of a student’s essay about GM food illustrated her trouble-shooting commenting practice.

Student writing:

uents of teacher comments at the beginning of the writing class.

uents Corresponding stance n n/197

ing Writers’ intentions Probing 100 51%

ying problems Prescriptive 180 91%

ing problems Tutoring 135 70%

specific suggestions Collaborative 163 83%

632 H.-T. Min / System 41 (2013) 625e638

Just a few years ago, we ate food produced by conventional techniques. Crossing natural varieties within thesame species bred these kinds of traditional plants, thus they could grow naturally by themselves. For example,high-yield rice had been crossed with disease resistant rice to get rice of higher quality. But now there is amore effective and more powerful way-Genetic Modification Food. Genetic engineers mix genes through labprocedures unnaturally1 to create a new breed. For example, scientists change pig’s2 genes to enable them havesome immunity from virus.3 In American,4 there are also GM beans and GM corn that have been planted. GMfood really brings revolutionary changes to food, and through this way benefits many people.5

Teacher comments:

1. This word [unnaturally] carries a connotation of “bad”, which conflicts with your main idea “benefits of GMfood.” You might want to delete it.

2. Use the plural possessive form [of “pig”]. You’re not talking about just one pig.3. How is this (“pigs getting immunity from virus”) different from traditional techniques? You might want to

explain where those pigs get anti-virus genes so that we know why this procedure is different from and moreeffective/powerful than the conventional ones.

4. Use a noun. American is an adjective.5. Be more specific about the controlling ideas of your thesis. Judging from the following paragraphs, you need to

add “especially farmers and famine victims” to your thesis statement.

One can see that the teacher/researcher was pretty comprehensive in her commentary. She commented on language(1, 2, and 4), content (3) and structural (5) issues. She also offered explications and specific suggestions for revision byapplying her emerging procedural knowledge about “specificity” (3 and 5).

5.3. Feedback belief at the end

As stated in the previous section, the teacher/researcher trained her students to do peer review during the 2nd and3rd writing cycles. This decision prompted her to consult literature on peer review training (Berg, 1999; Liu andHansen, 2002) and reader stances (Lockhart and Ng, 1995). From reading the literature, she realized that she hadfocused predominantly on students’ texts and unknowingly assumed a prescriptive reader stance. This realizationprompted her to make an effort to become a probing and collaborative reader. She reconstructed the order of theprevious guiding principles, with clarifying and soliciting writers’ intentions the first and foremost important task todo, followed by identifying and explaining perceived problems or confusing parts that failed to achieve the intendedmeanings, and collaborating with students on different word, phrase, or idea choices. The following entry showed thisbelief (LL-17 (4/19/05)):

“. need to verify their intentions first and then give suggestions.

An incident occurring at a teacherestudent conference also awakened her to the fact that focusing on student textsmay sometimes prevent her from knowing their real intentions. The following excerpt recorded her retrospectivethought about that conference where she misunderstood a student’s intention (RJ-20 4/22/05):

I felt embarrassed when Siana said she didn’t mean that

“her mother ‘devoted’ herself to them but ‘doted’ to them.”

I thought she misspelled the word “devote” as “dote” because

she wrote “she doted herself to us” in the essay. I instinctively

thought the word fitting in this expression was “devoted” and

corrected it without a second thought. Maybe that’s the problemd

without a second thought! I shouldn’t have responded to student writing

by instinct, and should’ve gone beyond the language and tried to

6 The

633H.-T. Min / System 41 (2013) 625e638

understand their intentions [underlies original].

With this critical experience, she constantly reminded herself of the sequence of the guiding principles whenmaking comments (RJ-32 5/15/05):

.need to check to see if my interpretation is correct.

Then explain to them the difference between what their writing

means and what I understand they intend to mean. Finally, give

specific suggestions.

Despite her belief in the importance of clarifying students’ intentions, she still believed in the value of a prescriptivereader, especially when students experienced language and format problems in their writing (LL-20 4/30/05):

.need to be prescriptive with language and format.

By this time, she had developed some procedural routines for being specific in her comments on students’ inap-propriate word choice and use of contrastive (e.g., however, one the other hand) and causal (e.g., therefore) adverbs.The following shows her belief about how to comment on inappropriate use of linking adverbs (RJ-28 5/4/05):

.need to point out the main ideas before and after the linking

adverbs to show them why the linking adverbs are inappropriate.

These procedural routines, along with the guiding principles, were more probing and collaborative in nature thanthe initially generated ones that required students to explain, illustrate, substitute, or delete a certain word/phrase/ideawithout checking students’ intentions. They also allowed the students to reexamine and negotiate their intendedmeanings with the teacher/researcher.

5.4. Relationship between feedback belief and practice toward the end

The teacher/researcher made 180 comments on students’ last essay, as shown in Table 3. She practiced what shebelieved about how to makewritten commentary 84% of the time in average at the end of the writing class. She probedstudents’ intentions in 147 comments (82%), identified problems in 141 comments (78%), explained the problems in157 comments (87%), and made specific suggestions in 160 comments (89%).

What follows is an example of her practice of the belief about acting as a probing, collaborative and prescriptivereader. A student wrote about cultural miscommunication. In the first paragraph, she described an incident about aChinese house owner and her Indonesian domestic workers in Indonesia. The owner paid her domestic workers eachmonth, but only to find that they would request an advance on their next month’s salary. She started developingnegative attitudes toward her domestic workers’ money-squandering behavior and deemed this conduct irresponsible.Her domestic workers, on the other hand, considered her hardhearted. In the 2nd paragraph, the student discussedIndonesians’ carefree dispositions and their enjoyment of living in the moment. Her 3rd paragraph is about theChinese notions of money-spending. She thought that “Chinese philosophy is more pragmatic”, which the writingteacher found problematic.6

Teacher Comments:

1. What do you mean by pragmatic here? Indonesians are pragmatic because they also deal with money issues intheir daily lives, but in a different way. You talk a lot about Chinese philosophy of life in this paragraph, such asmaking preparations for unexpected emergencies, obligations for their children, feelings of security with moneyaccrued in bank accounts, notions of being approved by others, conceptions of being responsible and credible.Some of the corresponding life philosophy aspects are not mentioned in the 2nd paragraph where you discussedIndonesians. What do you want to contrast exactly? All these aspects mentioned above? Remember that yourtopic is “Money matters.” If you would like to keep this lengthy discussion about differences in life philosophy,

actual student writing will be provided upon request.

Table 3

Constituents of teacher comments at the end of the writing class.

Constituents Corresponding stance n n/180

Clarifying Writers’ intentions Probing 147 82%

Identifying problems Prescriptive 141 78%

Explaining problems Tutoring 157 87%

Making specific suggestions Collaborative 160 89%

634 H.-T. Min / System 41 (2013) 625e638

then you need to add the missing parts I mentioned in the 2nd paragraph where you discussed Indonesians andconsider changing the topic to “Money and Life”. If you want to contrast only Indonesians’ conceptions aboutmoney and responsible solutions of money issues with Chinese ways, then you might want to delete theirrelevant information on family obligation and feelings of security.

2. Use the object of “they”.3. Delete it.4. Add more here. Remember that she gave the servants an advance the first time.

The 1st comment showed her probe into the student’s intentions, indicating a probing stance. The student gave anin-depth discussion about the Chinese philosophy of life, nevertheless, some of the details appeared somewhat un-related to the topic. Having spotted this issue, she reminded the student of the topic she wrote at the beginning. Sheprovided the student with two options and left the final decision to the student, signifying a collaborative stance. Thiscomment also showed how she applied her procedural knowledge about specificity to her commentary. Besidesclarifying the student’s intentions, she also acted as a prescriptive reader asking the student to correct her languageproblems (comments 2e4).

6. Discussion

A noticeable change in the writing teacher/researcher’s feedback beliefs at the beginning and end of the writingclass was the stances she adopted while giving feedback. At the beginning of the semester, she predominantly adopteda prescriptive stance (91%) when providing comments on the students’ first essay, assuming that she understoodstudents’ intentions and focusing on perceived problematic areas in their writing, despite her belief in the equalimportance of the guiding principles of teacher response. Providing clear explanations of perceived problems andspecific suggestions to solving these identified problems constituted the core principles underlying her initial feedbackbelief. It was not until the time when she decided to train her students to conduct peer review did she consult pro-fessional knowledge in relevant literature. This consultation made her realize different types of assistance whichvarious reader stances could offer writers. This new professional knowledge instigated a shift in her beliefsdthat theguiding principles underpinning teacher response were not of equal importance and that ascertaining, rather thanassuming, a full understanding of students’ intentions should be the top priority in her comments to maximize po-tential benefits of her feedback to students.

A corresponding change in her feedback practice was noted in the frequency of occurrence of clarifying students’intentions. In her feedback on students’ first essay at the beginning of the semester, attempts probing students’meanings occurred only 51% of the time, whereas at the end of the semester, such attempts rose sharply to 82% in hercomments on students’ last essay. In contrast, a reverse trend occurred with identification of students’ problems at thebeginning and end of the semester. She identified problems almost every time she made a comment (91%) on students’first essay, but did so less frequently when commenting on their last essay (78%). These changes in her practicereflected a more probing and collaborative reader stance at the end, as opposed to the predominantly prescriptivestance she assumed at the beginning.

6.1. Congruence between feedback beliefs and practices

The writing teacher/researcher’s feedback practice generally matched her beliefs at the beginning and end of thewriting class. At the beginning, due to her unchecked assumptions of students’ intentions, her comments registeredfewer probes into students’ intentions and more problem identifications, explanations, as well as specific suggestions.

635H.-T. Min / System 41 (2013) 625e638

Toward the end, she assumed the role of a probing and collaborative tutor, focusing on understanding students’ in-tentions and explaining to them the perceived problems and confusing parts that failed to achieve the intendedmeanings. Her written comments reflected such a change in stance, characterized by somewhat equal amounts ofinquiries, explanations, and suggestions but fewer attempts to identify problems.

Undoubtedly the implementation of peer review had some effect on this change in her beliefs and practices aboutfeedback provision. The explicit articulation and public demonstration of how to provide revision-oriented feedbackin class had the added effect of reminding her to adhere to what she modeled. Imagining that she was being observedby her students, she felt obligated to align her commentary practices with her articulated beliefs lest students shouldchallenge her mismatched words and behavior. Similar “heightened awareness” has also been documented in previousresearch on a writing teacher (Ferris et al., 1997). That teacher’s “increased sensitivity” contributed to the “amount,substance, and tone of her written comments” during the 2nd semester (p. 171), albeit the source of her sensitivity wasrelated to researchers’ rather than students’ observation in this study.

Tsui (2003: 223e4) identified three characteristics that differentiate novice from expert teachers, one of which isthe extent to which the practical knowledge gained through experience can be made explicit and to which formalknowledge can be transformed into practical knowledge. The writing teacher’s constant reflection prompted her toattend to her commenting stances/skills and made her explicitly aware of what worked and did not work with herstudents. Her rearranging the sequence of the guiding principles and procedurizing her formal knowledge aboutspecificity are indicators of the latter characteristic. These two competencies to a great extent helped the writingteacher align her feedback practices with her beliefs. Further research is needed to examine the role of expertise inrelationships between matched beliefs and practices.

6.2. Structural change in beliefs

The structural change in the guiding principles underlying her beliefs about how to make comments e from looseconnection among each principle to a hierarchical and sequential proceduredindicated a qualitative change in herdeclarative knowledge. Content-wise, she still believed in the value of those guiding principles while making com-ments. However, there was a clear restructuring of the guiding principles, with “probing student intentions” being thetop priority and the remaining three (“identifying problems,” “explaining the nature of problems,” and “makingspecific suggestions”) sequentially organized into a coherent procedure. Such structural changes in her knowledge andbeliefs instigated a substantial change in her commentary practices and projected a different teacher stance in laterfeedback provision. This finding demonstrated the impact of structural changes in her beliefs on her practices.Although structural changes have been noted in student teachers’ personal theories about teaching effectiveness(Sendan and Roberts, 1998), those changes did not appear to effect a change in their behavior. More research should bedone to examine the relationship between structural changes in writing teachers’ beliefs and the potential impact ontheir practices.

6.3. Importance of developing procedural knowledge

A common problem facing most practitioners who try to apply researchers’ technical knowledge to practice is the“how” issuedhow to proceduralize researchers’ technical (i.e., declarative) knowledge into a course of action in realjob situations. In this study, the issues were how to generate text-specific feedback, combine this with other technicalknowledge about reader stances in a coherent framework, and design corresponding procedural routines to implementthis integrated feedback belief. At the beginning, the writing teacher/researcher was concerned only about beingspecific in her feedback, trying to imitate model examples of “text-specific” comments reported by researchers (e.g.,Ferris et al., 1997). It was not until her reading of literature on peer review stances and her misunderstanding Siana’sintentions did she start to question her original prescriptive stance and presumption of understanding students’ in-tentions. She then studied the principles advocated by various researchers for providing feedback, organized theguiding principles in accordance with their hierarchical importance in probing and collaborative reader stances,analyzed model examples researchers cited for text-specific comments in these two stances for patterns, and finallycame up with her own procedural routines of making specific comments as a probing and collaborative reader. Theseprocedural routines may be a key to facilitating the writing teacher/researcher in realizing her feedback belief aboutacting as a probing and collaborative reader who is specific in her comments.

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7. Conclusions

This self-study research reported the current teacher/researcher’s critical self-examination of her beliefs about howto make comments and the relationship between her beliefs and practices of written feedback at the beginning and endof the semester. The findings show that the writing teacher’s beliefs changed over time due to her realization of thehierarchical relationships of the guiding principles, resulting in a shift in stance in her written comments. Her constantreflection, along with the explicit articulation and demonstration of her beliefs in the form of peer review training,helped align her feedback practices with her beliefs at different points in time.

This study is significant in terms of the research method, focus, and teacher education. In terms of the researchmethod, it underscores the importance of reflective teacher research in studying EFL writing teacher beliefs andpractices. The majority of research on EFL writing teacher beliefs follows the traditional research paradigm of inde-pendent researchers examining teachers’ beliefs through prefabricated questionnaire and interview questions. Althoughthis line of research can capture EFL writing teachers’ general beliefs and practices, it often gives a generic level ofdescription. In fact, through “systematic and intentional inquiry by teachers about their own school and classroomwork”(Cochran-Smith and Lytle, 1993: 23e24), findings of such critical self-inquiry can be equally, if not more insightful andimmediately relevant to EFLwriting teachers’ practice. Ortega (2009: 249) argued that “the field of L2 writing stands togain much if the stories of diverse EFL writers are made visible through interpretive- qualitative longitudinal casestudies”. The same argument can be applied to stories of EFL writing teachers. As revealed in this case study, the EFLwriting teacher/researcher’s critical reflections on her classroom practices in her journal and learning log provepromising for richer understandings of knowledge construction and belief reconceptualization, which otherwise wouldnot be easily disclosed in interview and questionnaire questions in standard formats to independent researchers (Borg,2006). It also provides a model for pre- and in-service writing teachers who are interested in conducting a self-study toexplore their beliefs about how to provide written feedback, reflect on their feedback practices, share these experienceswith other writing teachers through publications so that all would benefit from such reflections.

In terms of the research focus, this study identifies a structural change in the writing teacher’s belief system, withunderstanding students’ intentions being the core guiding principle, taking precedence over other principles. Thisstructural change instigated a shift in her belief about teacher stance in her written comments. This finding is sig-nificant because it moves beyond the predominant “one-dimensional perspective” on the (mis)match between beliefsand practices and adds to our understanding of how interactions among elements of teachers’ cognitive systems resultin changes in beliefs over time. Like what Phipps and Borg (2009: 388) pointed out, we need to embark on examining“belief systems . in more complex ways”.

The other research focus this study accentuates is the role of procedural knowledge (Basturkmen et al., 2004) infacilitating congruity between writing teachers’ beliefs and practices about how to make comments. Previous researchon teachers’ beliefs and practices predominantly turned to situational factors for explanations of observed mismatches(e.g., institutional policies and students’ expectations). Few researchers have noted the role of teachers’ proceduralknowledge in this relationship. Yet EFL writing teachers, novice or veteran, are constantly struggling with how toapply their declarative knowledge about teacher response (Ferris et al., 1997) to various writing contexts. Com-menting, like any other teaching skills, requires writing teachers’ declarative knowledge (knowing the “what”) andprocedural knowledge about how to execute skills. The writing teacher still struggled with how to make her commentsspecific on issues of organization and coherence despite 7 years of teaching writing and making comments. Thisproblem might be more pronounced among novice writing teachers. More research should focus on this aspect ofknowledge and beliefs when examining factors influencing relationships of EFL writing teachers’ beliefs and prac-tices. More research is also needed to document how EFL writing teachers with procedural knowledge enact theirbeliefs in the face of adverse contextual factors, a characteristic of expert teachers (Tsui, 2003). Such descriptionswould be of much educational value to pre- and in-service EFL writing teachers who do not know how to enact theirbeliefs under similar circumstances.

Research on relationships between writing teacher beliefs and practices is replete with findings of mismatches(Montgomery and Baker, 2007; Lee, 2009; Phipps and Borg, 2009), while findings of congruent beliefs and practicesare scarce. But it does not mean that the contribution of the latter is less significant. Instead the findings of the lattermay give us some insights into how expertise (Tsui, 2003) might help align teacher beliefs and practices. It is in thisregard that this study is significant. For writing teacher training program and education research, it is important toexamine factors for mismatches and matches between writing teachers’ beliefs and practices so that insights from both

637H.-T. Min / System 41 (2013) 625e638

can be drawn and appropriate training curriculum can be developed. The findings of this study have an importantpedagogical implication. It underscores the importance of “a reflective component” in degree-awarding and certificateprograms for ESL/EFL writing teachers (Casanave, 2009: 273). Training prospective and in-service writing teachersto form a habit of constant reflection can render them more cognizant of the (in)congruity between their beliefs andpractices, and thus more likely to prompt them to seek alternatives to improve their practices or self-examine theirbeliefs. This type of active and independent “reflective practitioners., who know their beliefs and attitudes well, andwho are always on the lookout for ways to adjust their agendas to the realities that they encounter” (Casanave, 2009:273) should be the ultimate goal of writing teacher education.

Acknowledgments

This study is partially sponsored by the National Science Council of the Republic of China on Taiwan (projectnumber NSC 99-2410-H-006-093-, NSC 101-2410-H-006-085). The author wishes to thank the anonymous reviewersand the editor for their helpful comments.

Appendix I. Coding of feedback beliefs

Coding Reflection journal

(RJ)/Learning log (LL)

Sample entry

Knowing Students’

Intentions

RJ-20 (4-22-05) .should’ve gone beyond the language and tried to understand their intentions.LL-25 (4/27/05) .the American teacher in Goldstein and Conrad’s study did not understand the

Chinese student.

Identifying problems LL-9 (3/25/05) .need to show students the location of their problems in the margins.Explication RJ-3 (3/13/05) .need to explain to them why some linking adverbs do not work in their writing...

Making suggestions LL-23 (4/23/05) .suggestions asking for facts are easier for students to revise. students’ intentions.Specificity RJ-6 (3/22/05) .I don’t want them to wonder what to do with their writing after reading my comments.

I need to be specific with my suggestions...

LL-2(2/27/05) .The teacher refrained from imposing her opinions on the student but challenged his

idea about career women. Is this indirect method a better way to express her opinion

toward the student’s essay?

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