Dialogic feedback and literary disciplinary knowledge in L2 writing instruction: how attitude to feedback influences academic achievement

Abstract

Recent research has foregrounded the importance of student engagement with feedback on writing (Quinton & Smallbone, 2010;Zhang & Hyland, 2018;. At the same time, there is a small but growing body of scholarship exploring the role that feedback plays in developing discipline-specific competencies in student writers in an L2 context (Hyland, 2013). This study aims to contribute to this burgeoning field by exploring the complex relationship between student attitude to peer and teacher feedback, academic achievement, and dialogic engagement with such feedback, with particular focus on the development of literary disciplinary knowledge in an L2 context. The findings of this mixed-method exploratory study reveal a positive correlation between student attitude to feedback pertaining to disciplinary knowledge development, and achievement within the field of literary studies. This stands in contrast to other findings in this study which see only a weak correlation between attitudes to both peer and teacher feedback, and writing performance. Furthermore, this study argues that active engagement with feedback is linked to greater levels of discipline-specific writing competencies.

The Impact of Teacher Feedback on Non-cognitive Aspects of Student's Performance in Higher Education: A Review of Research

“…Through this systematic review of research, it was found that feedback can have a significant impact on the development of non-cognitive skills. Regarding communication and interpersonal skills, the provision of different types of feedback (oral-written, perceptual, constructive, electronic, internal-external) by teachers significantly enhanced the skills of various forms of communication (Younis et al, 2021;Kyne et al, 2023), b) listening (Johnson & Cooke, 2016;Bono et al, 2017;Narciss et al, 2022), c) teamwork and collaboration (Zhang et al, 2014;Turner, 2023;Cacciamani et al, 2023), d) conflict resolution (Narciss et al, 2022Turner, 2023, networking and relationship building (Wang & Zhang, 2020;Turner, 2023;Cacciamani et al, 2023).…”

“…Regarding the area of creativity, providing different types of feedback (oral-written, corrective, electronic, a combination of teacher and learner feedback) enhanced critical thinking (Zhang et al, 2014;Wahyuningsih, 2020;Porter & Grippa, 2020;Chakarvarti, 2022) and encouraged learner ingenuity (Medina, 2013). In adaptability, learners demonstrated flexibility and receptiveness to new ideas (Turner, 2023). In the field of leadership and management skills development, the provision of both final and electronic feedback by teachers led learners to make appropriate decisions to solve problems (Medina, 2013;Pratiwi et al, 2018;Kyne et al, 2023) with parallel time management and taking initiatives (Kyne et al, 2023).…”

“…The correlation of feedback with work ethic is essential since different types of teacher feedback (perceived, final) had a positive impact on student's academic performance with a significant effect on learning engagement and responsibility (Wang & Zhang, 2020;Liu et al, 2023), while feedback from trainees regarding the development of disciplinary knowledge and responsibility was positively addressed (Turner, 2023). Regarding cultural competence, the application of written corrective feedback helped the learners to adapt epistemologically and culturally to different cultural values (Ismail et al, 2023) while simultaneously strengthening the social dimension of the sense of community (Cacciamani et al, 2023).…”

ESL/EFL Learners' Responses to Teacher Written Feedback: Reviewing a Recent Decade of Empirical Studies

“…The remaining 11 studies also chose university students as their main student participants to investigate learners' responses to TWF by linking them to various theories, covering at various responses in their studies. The theories included: the noticing hypothesis and output hypothesis (Hanaoka and Izumi, 2012); a taxonomy of academic emotions (Han and Hyland, 2019a); selfregulated learning (Xu, 2021); a tripartite definition of written feedback (Chong, 2019); dialogism (Turner, 2021); systemic functional linguistics (Zhang X., 2021); ecology (Lee et al, 2021); L2 socialization theory (Anderson, 2021;Pitura, 2021); a socio-constructivist approach (Rivens Mompean, 2010); the framework of learning-oriented language assessment (Kim and Kim, 2017); and a second language socialization theoretical framework (Anderson, 2021).…”

“…Learners' learning experiences revealed some experience-related factors, namely learners' previous experience with L2 or feedback (e.g., failure) and revision achievement. Other intra-factors included self-consciousness-related factors (e.g., confidence) (Ferris et al, 2013) and goal-related factors (e.g., learning goals, expectation) (Han and Hyland, 2015;Turner, 2021).…”