EFL Supervisors’ Written Feedback Focus and Language Functions on Masters Degree Students Thesis

Abstract

The objective of this study was to examine EFL supervisors’ written feedback focus, and language functions at some selected public universities in Ethiopia. To address the objective of the study, a descriptive exploratory design was adopted. 55 supervisees were randomly selected of 255 for the questionnaire survey. Besides, four supervisors were selected for interviews. Moreover, feedback comments on five theses drafts were utilized as data sources. To decide the language functions and feedback foci, frequency counts and percentage were used. Nonetheless, the interview data were analyzed qualitatively as per their themes. The results showed thesis supervisors used the directive feedback language function most prevailingly over the expressive in their feedback provision. There was no balance of praise, criticism, and suggestions in the provision of feedback comments. The supervisors largely focused on content knowledge, followed by genre knowledge, and then linguistic accuracy and appropriateness (forms), respectively.