Exploring teacher written feedback in EFL writing classrooms: Beliefs and practices in interaction

Abstract

As an important instructional affordance, teacher written feedback is widely used in second language (L2) writing contexts. While copious evidence has shown that such a pedagogical practice can facilitate L2 learners’ writing performance, especially their writing accuracy, little is known about how novice writing teachers conceptualize and enact written feedback in contexts of English as a foreign language (EFL). To fill this gap, we examined four novice writing teachers’ espoused written feedback beliefs and their actual practices in Chinese tertiary EFL writing classrooms. Based on data from semi-structured interviews and students’ writing samples, we found that they adopted a comprehensive approach to feedback provision, and were most concerned with errors in language, particularly grammar when providing feedback. These teachers almost reached a consensus in their beliefs about feedback scope and feedback focus, but they held varying beliefs about feedback strategies. Additionally, this study revealed the complexity of belief-practice relationships, in terms of the coexistence of consistencies and inconsistencies. Specifically, these teachers’ beliefs paralleled their practices in feedback scope, but their beliefs and practices mismatched with regard to feedback focus and feedback strategies. This article concludes with a discussion of the important pedagogical implications.

Keywords

EFL writing novice EFL writing teachers teachers’ beliefs teachers’ practices teacher written feedback

I Introduction

Embedded in the educational process, feedback, as a crucial pedagogical instrument in classroom-based instruction, contributes to students’ learning achievement (Hattie & Timperley, 2007). Specific to second language (L2) writing instruction, teacher written feedback refers to teachers’ written comments on and responses to their students’ writing, targeting different aspects of writing ((Bitchener and Storch, 2016) (Ferris 1995) Li & Vuono, 2019; Zhang & Cheng, 2021). It is a ubiquitous intervention method to scaffold L2 learners’ writing process and facilitate their writing output (Lee, 2013a; Lee, Mak, & Burns, 2015; Zhang, 2013; Zhang & Cheng, 2021; Zhang et al., 2021).

In the current literature, studies on teachers’ beliefs regarding written feedback are few in number (see Cheng & Zhang, 2021a, 2021b; Ferris, 2014; Junqueira & Payant, 2015; Lee, 2013b, 2017; Mao & Crosthwaite, 2019). As beliefs are recognized to underpin and rationalize teachers’ in-class behaviors, understanding their beliefs is important in the examination of their actual pedagogical practices (Borg, 2003, 2006(Pajares 1992)). The sparse studies on teachers’ beliefs and practices are conducted from feedback practitioners’ perspectives in authentic L2 writing classrooms (e.g. Alkhatib, 2015; Alshahrani & Storch, 2014; Lee, 2009), and thus they have great ecological value. However, such studies tend to have been implemented in L2 contexts outside mainland China (Mao & Crosthwaite, 2019). Influenced by traditional Chinese culture, especially Confucian philosophical thoughts, the Chinese educational system espouses and values some entrenched norms including jiāoshūyùrén (teaching books and educating people) and zūnshīàijiào (respecting teachers and valuing education) (Leng, 2005). As such, this system is characterized by a clear unbalanced power relationship between teachers and students. In China, teachers are expected to shoulder responsibility for their students’ development. Accordingly, they are regarded as the authority figures of knowledge and truth, playing a leading role in transmitting knowledge and improving students’ moral standard, and endowed with a high status in the educational schema. As for their students, they are depicted as reserved and reticent recipients of knowledge. Moreover, they are required to show respect for their teachers and not allowed to challenge them (Sheng, 2019; Wu, Zhang & Dixon, 2021). Additionally, existing studies on teachers’ written feedback beliefs have mainly focused on experienced teachers, paying little attention to their novice counterparts (Kartchava et al., 2020; Yu et al., 2020). As reported in the literature, those who have at most four years of formal teaching experience are usually referred to as novice teachers (Burkhauser & Lesaux, 2017; Crusan, Plakans, & Gebril, 2016; Zhang & Zhang, 2020).

Unlike expert teachers, novice teachers have just stepped onto their professional path and are still experiencing the transition ‘from learning “to become a teacher” to learning “how to teach”’ (Schatz-Oppenheimer & Dvir, 2014, p. 140). Thus, such teachers’ beliefs and practices are likely to differ from those of more experienced teachers. Given the significant impact of context and teaching experience on teachers’ beliefs and practices (Bao, 2019; Bao, Zhang, & Dixon, 2021; Crusan et al., 2016), studies about how teachers with scant teaching experience believe and act in relation to written feedback are warranted in mainland China.

To fill these important gaps, we employed a case study approach to investigate four novice English as a foreign language (EFL) writing teachers’ conceptualizations and actualizations of written feedback in Chinese university EFL settings. In doing so, this study aims to advance our understanding of the complex relationships between teachers’ beliefs and practices in written feedback provision. The findings seek to provide pedagogical implications for novice L2 writing teachers, university administrators, and teacher educators, which would facilitate written feedback provision and maximize the effectiveness of teacher written feedback.

II Literature review

1 Teacher written feedback

In order to improve the effectiveness of written feedback, researchers have endeavored to address the typologies of written feedback, i.e. feedback focus, feedback scope, and feedback strategy, as shown in recent publications (e.g. Alkhatib, 2015; Bitchener & Ferris, 2012; Ellis, 2009; Lee, 2017; Sheen, 2011).

Feedback focus refers to what teachers focus on when providing written feedback (Yu & Lee, 2014). In general, teachers and researchers assess writing according to three dimensions, namely, language, content, and organization, which are further classified into local (i.e. language) and global level foci (i.e. content and organization) (Butler & Britt, 2011; Wallace & Hayes, 1991). Accordingly, there are two types of feedback with regard to the focus: local feedback and global feedback. In the extant literature, researchers have compared the relative effectiveness of local and global feedback, finding that global feedback had a more moderate effect on improvement in high-order dimensions of writing as compared with the effect of local feedback on writing accuracy (Ashwell, 2000; Lee, 1997; Zhang, 2018; Zhang & Cheng, 2021).

As regards feedback scope, researchers have examined whether teachers should mark a wide array of errors (i.e. unfocused/comprehensive feedback) or correct only a few errors and leave others uncorrected (i.e. focused/selective feedback). In the current literature, it appears that researchers prefer focused feedback to comprehensive feedback. They have provided both theoretical and empirical evidence for the effectiveness of focused feedback. Theoretically, focused feedback has the advantage of avoiding cognitive overload among L2 learners, especially for low-achievers. This enables them to have additional cognitive resources to process new information efficiently. Furthermore, researchers have empirically tested the value of focused feedback on students’ writing performance, finding that focused feedback improves L2 learners’ writing accuracy in specific target structure(s) (e.g. Bitchener & Knoch, 2009; Sheen, 2007; Suzuki, Nassaji, & Sato, 2019).

However, this practice is called into question due to its lack of ecological validity (e.g. Hartshorn & Evans, 2015; Storch, 2010; Van Beuningen, 2010). Since the ultimate purpose of teachers’ written feedback provision in real L2 writing classrooms is to improve students’ overall writing performance, focused feedback targeting one or a few pre-selected error types is far from sufficient to achieve this goal (Storch, 2010; Hartshorn & Evans, 2015). Therefore, some scholars argue that comprehensive feedback should be emphasized and utilized by teachers (Zhang & Cheng, 2021). In stark contrast to a wealth of studies on focused feedback, the available research that is intended to verify the benefits of comprehensive feedback is rather scarce, but its results do suggest that such feedback benefits L2 students’ general writing accuracy (Frear & Chiu, 2015; Karim & Nassaji, 2020; Rahimi, 2009; Van Beuningen, de Jong, & Kuiken, 2012). To date, researchers seem to have divergent views on these two types of written feedback.

Aside from the extent to which written feedback should be offered, teachers also have to make a decision on the selection of a direct or indirect feedback strategy in feedback provision. Direct written feedback refers to the provision of correct answers to errors or specific solutions to problems, whereas indirect written feedback is defined as the identification of errors or problems without offering corrections or solutions (Bitchener & Ferris, 2012; Lee et al., 2015). Currently, evidence on the relative efficacy of direct and indirect written feedback is inconclusive. Inconsistent results among studies may be ascribed to various methodologies such as different participants with various language proficiency and different writing genres (Kang & Han, 2015; Liu & Brown, 2015; Storch, 2010).

Direct and indirect feedback both have their respective merits. To be specific, researchers endorsing indirect written feedback claim that with such feedback, L2 learners have opportunities to engage themselves more profoundly in the process of error correction, enabling them to reflect upon their current interlanguage system and exercise their knowledge to correct errors. Thus, indirect feedback probably fosters students’ self-editing skills and benefits their long-term development in writing (Ferris, 1995; Lalande, 1982). In contrast, the advocates of direct written feedback argue that indirect feedback fails to provide learners with sufficient information to treat complicated errors (e.g. syntactic errors). Instead, direct feedback helps students steer away from confusion and lessen their cognitive load. Furthermore, since direct feedback provides students with input, it possibly contributes to L2 learners’ instant internalization of correct forms (Chandler, 2003) and makes it possible for them to test hypotheses that they have made about the target language (Bitchener & Knoch, 2010; Van Beuningen, 2010).

2 Teachers’ beliefs and practices about written feedback in L2 writing

Generally speaking, all teachers hold beliefs regarding teaching and learning, and such beliefs embody their individual values and ideologies (Farrell & Bennis, 2013; Wu et al., 2021). However, teachers’ beliefs are considered as a ‘messy construct’, since there are many interchangeable terms in the literature, including conceptions, perceptions, principles (Pajares, 1992). In our study, ‘teachers’ beliefs’ is defined as ‘the unobservable cognitive dimensions of teaching – what teachers know, believe and think’ (Borg, 2003, p. 81). In other words, the construct ‘teachers’ beliefs’ refers to the statements which they make about their ideas, thoughts and knowledge and which are expressed as evaluations of what should be done, what should be the case, and what is preferable in terms of providing written feedback (Basturkmen, Loewen, & Ellis, 2004).

In the current body of literature, the relationship between teachers’ beliefs and practices is dynamic and nonlinear. Their beliefs, on the one hand, guide and inform their actual teaching practices, thereby leading to the consistency between teachers’ beliefs and practices. On the other hand, teachers’ beliefs do not always align with their practices due to a variety of factors related to teachers, students, and contexts in which they work (Basturkmen, 2012; Borg, 2006). The congruences and incongruences between language teachers’ beliefs and practices are well described in the existing literature on teachers’ beliefs (e.g. Farrell & Ives, 2015; Roothooft, 2014; Sun & Zhang, 2021).

Several studies have examined novice language teachers’ beliefs and practices in China. Conducting a case study in mainland China, Kang and Cheng (2014) investigated a novice secondary school teacher’s cognition and classroom practices in relation to EFL teaching and her cognition development. They found that the novice teacher’s cognition influenced her teaching behaviors cyclically, which contributed to the teacher’s continuous development. Furthermore, her cognition was not well formed but changed as a result of her pedagogical knowledge, beliefs, classroom practices, and teaching context. Yu et al. (2020) explored how two novice teachers conceptualized and enacted EFL writing instruction in the Macau secondary school context. They reported that they tended to give up their self-reported beliefs while experiencing some constraints from their school and curriculum, which resulted in the inconsistencies between their beliefs and practices. Embedded in the Hong Kong EFL context, Huang, Wang, and Teng’s (2021) case study revealed that while novice teachers’ beliefs were mainly from their previous learning experiences, such beliefs developed dynamically and could be reshaped by a variety of contextual realities, which further impacted their identity construction and actual teaching practices (see also Jiang & Zhang, 2021). Although these studies have helped advance our understanding of novice teachers’ beliefs and practices about EFL teaching in general in China, little is known about how Chinese novice EFL teachers view and implement written feedback in such a context.

In the arena of teacher written feedback in L2 writing, some studies have revealed that teachers’ beliefs did mesh with their practices in different research contexts such as English as a second language (ESL) postsecondary settings in the United States (Ferris, 2014) and the EFL context in Taiwan (Min, 2013). However, more studies have reported discrepancies (e.g. Alkhatib, 2015; Alshahrani & Storch, 2014; Junqueira & Payant, 2015; Montgomery & Baker, 2007). For example, drawing on data from a questionnaire and students’ compositions with written feedback, Montgomery and Baker (2007) reported a belief-practice gulf in feedback focus in a tertiary ESL site in the US. That is, these ESL writing teachers espoused the beliefs that more feedback should be provided on global issues (content and organization), but in practice they placed much more emphasis on grammar. Alshahrani and Storch (2014) examined teachers’ beliefs and practices regarding written feedback in a Saudi university EFL setting, in which strict guidelines were applied on teachers’ written feedback provision. According to the analysis of three teachers’ semi-structured interviews and 45 students’ writing samples with teacher written feedback, the results showed that such EFL tertiary writing teachers provided a large proportion of written feedback on mechanics, despite these teachers’ support for feedback to be given on grammar or vocabulary. Also conducted within a tertiary EFL context in Saudi, Alkhatib’s (2015) study found that teachers’ beliefs were at odds with their practices in regard to the strategies of feedback. While they believed in direct feedback, they provided both direct and indirect feedback concurrently.

Surprisingly, little research in this line has been anchored in EFL context in mainland China, which houses the largest population of EFL learners in the world (Zhu & Wang, 2019). However, two studies merit special comments, as they are particularly relevant to our study. Lee (2009) employed multiple instruments (i.e. questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, and students’ written texts with teacher written feedback) to explore secondary teachers’ written feedback beliefs and practices in the Hong Kong EFL context. She discovered a range of mismatches between their beliefs and practices. For instance, teachers favored that feedback should be given to problems in global areas, whereas they mainly concentrated on linguistic errors in actual feedback provision; they provided feedback comprehensively, despite showing preference for focused feedback. More recently, Mao and Crosthwaite (2019) addressed teachers’ written feedback beliefs and practices in a mainland Chinese context. To our knowledge, their study is the only one to touch upon this issue in such a context. Through the examination of data from students’ writing samples, questionnaires, and semi-structured interviews, they identified three disparities between five EFL college teachers’ beliefs and their practices: (1) teachers’ beliefs about direct written feedback contradicted the larger amount of indirect feedback they gave in practice; (2) teachers thought they presented the total number of errors in students’ writing, but they did not do so when giving feedback; and (3) teachers paid much more attention to local issues, in spite of their beliefs in providing written feedback on global issues. These two studies contributed to our knowledge of secondary/tertiary EFL teachers’ beliefs and practices about written feedback in China. They described a non-linear and complicated belief-practice relationship in the domain of written feedback. According to the studies, such teachers did not always realize their beliefs through their actual practices of providing written feedback due to some contextual factors such as time constraint, school policy, and heavy workload within the Chinese EFL context. Specifically, what both studies found was that teachers’ espoused beliefs tended to be inconsistent with their classroom practices with regard to feedback scope and feedback focus.

In comparison with substantial research using (quasi-) experimental designs to examine the effects of teacher written feedback on L2 writing performance, comparatively little attention has been paid to feedback practitioners’ beliefs and practices, as pointed out by a number of scholars (e.g. Evans, Hartshorn, & Tuioti, 2010; Lee, 2009, 2013b; Mao & Crosthwaite, 2019). While the limited studies reviewed above do add our knowledge in this field, several issues still remain to be addressed. First, as mentioned earlier, such studies are mostly conducted in other L2 contexts (e.g. Alshahrani & Storch, 2014; Junqueira & Payant, 2015; Lee, 2009; Montgomery & Baker, 2007), and little has been reported on this aspect of EFL teachers in mainland China. Thus, there is a need for more studies to investigate teachers’ perspectives on written feedback and how they actually implement it in such a context.

Second, among the limited studies, some are not systematic investigations (e.g. Ferris, 2014; Junqueira & Payant, 2015; Montgomery & Baker, 2007), only focusing on teachers’ conceptions and practices in one or two dimensions of written feedback. In this sense, studies that systematically examine how L2 writing teachers believe in and enact feedback scope, feedback focus, and feedback strategy are called for in order to establish a comprehensive picture.

More importantly, whereas the majority of existing studies have paid much attention to experienced L2 writing teachers’ beliefs and practices regarding written feedback provision (e.g. Alkhatib, 2015; Lee, 2009, 2011; Mao & Crosthwaite, 2019), how writing teachers with little teaching experience conceptualize and implement such a pedagogical practice remains under-researched. After several years of professional life, seasoned teachers have a better understanding of what students expect and what teaching methods work better. Commonly, they are more likely to base their beliefs and practices on their teaching experience (Tsui, 2009; Wu et al., 2021; Zhang & Zhang, 2020). In contrast, novice teachers are not only just embarking on their professional careers, but also lack sufficient classroom experience and may be faced with more challenges related to their contexts. Their teaching beliefs and practices are probably formed from the synergy of their prior learning experiences and instructional contexts (Duffin, French, & Patrick, 2012; Levin, 2015). This may result in some distinct features, which could make their beliefs and practices different from those of their experienced colleagues (Yu et al., 2020). As Basturkmen et al. (2004) suggested, teaching experience influences what teachers think about and how they enact the planned and unplanned aspects of language teaching. To bridge these gaps, the present study sets out to answer the following research questions:

How do novice tertiary EFL teachers implement written feedback on their students’ writing in mainland China?

What beliefs do they espouse regarding written feedback?

To what extent do their written feedback beliefs match their actual practices?

III Methodology

1 Methodological positioning

As mentioned earlier, this study adopted a case study approach to address the research questions, which was rationalized by several reasons. First, the use of such an approach is appropriate for investigating ‘how’ or ‘why’ questions when researchers have little control over the phenomenon under investigation and studies focus on a contemporary phenomenon in a real-life context (Yin, 2003). Our study set out to examine how Chinese novice EFL writing teachers conceptualized and enacted written feedback in real L2 writing classrooms; their written feedback beliefs and practices were a contemporary phenomenon in the real-life context and were not controlled by the researchers. Given that this study concentrated on naturally occurring situations and the nature of discovery, a case study was suitable (Merriam, 2002). Additionally, a case study can offer a rich and thick description of a phenomenon in a particular context (Duff, 2012), which renders deep and contextualized insights into the phenomenon being examined. Thus, using such an approach can help us gain a better understanding of Chinese novice EFL writing teachers’ beliefs and practices. Finally, this approach is so flexible that it can include qualitative or quantitative data or a mixture of both (Merriam, 2002; Yin, 2003). In our case, the study was qualitatively oriented, but it also included quantitative data (e.g. frequencies and percentages) to demonstrate the characteristics and patterns of each participant’s written feedback practices.

2 Research context

To fully understand the context, we need to provide some essential background information on EFL provisions in Chinese tertiary education. EFL teaching in universities in mainland China is guided by nation-wide curriculum requirements, which are stipulated by the Ministry of Education (MoE) of China. After enrolling in universities, all students are required to learn English, which is a compulsory course. At the tertiary level, students receiving English education are classified into two groups: English majors and non-English majors. Commonly, Chinese tertiary EFL learners are taught by a grammar translation approach, which puts much emphasis on language and linguistic accuracy (Rao & Li, 2017). As such, teachers always spare no effort to explicate the texts carefully, elaborate on grammatical points and sentence structures, paraphrase difficult sentences, and ask specific questions about the texts. Instructed by such an approach, students tend to be communicatively incompetent (Cheng & Wang, 2012).

Additionally, EFL learners at the Chinese tertiary level need to sit for some high-stakes examinations to show that their English proficiency has met the standard stipulated by the MoE. Currently, there are two different testing systems assessing non-English and English major students’ English level, respectively. English proficiency for students in non-English major is evaluated by the College English Test (CET), Bands 4 and 6. English majors are required to take the Test for English Majors (TEM), Bands 4 and 8. Overall, English examinations play a pivotal role in English teaching and learning at the tertiary level (Yang & Gao, 2013; Zhang, 2016). Thus, English instruction in Chinese universities is, to a large degree, examination-oriented, and many students often regard the passing of English examinations as their goal of English learning, lacking the intrinsic motivation to improve their English proficiency (Teng & Zhang, 2016; Zhang & Ben Said, 2014).

As for this study, it was conducted at two medium-ranking universities in a city in central China (i.e. a second-tier city), rather than key universities in some developed cities in China. Our decision on selecting the two universities from such a city as research sites was made to avoid becoming elitist so that our samples could represent the majority of universities in mainland China. The participating teachers were EFL writing teachers of English major sophomore students. During the period of data collection, all the English major sophomore students in these two universities were required to enroll in the English Writing Course, which aimed to foster their writing competence in different genres and help them pass the TEM-4 test. In the course students needed to compose four or five pieces of writing in class or after class, which were used to evaluate their course performance. The prompts for these writing assignments were selected from the TEM-4 past battery, and students were asked to write their compositions with around 200 words within 40 minutes. After the students had completed their writing tasks, the teachers marked and gave feedback on the first drafts of their assignments. Then, students revised their writing based on their teachers’ feedback.

3 Participants

We employed a purposeful sampling strategy to select the participants through assistance from colleagues and via social media such as QQ and WeChat, two popular platforms in China. As Dörnyei (2007) stated, such a strategy can help select the participants ‘who can provide rich and varied insights into the phenomenon being investigated so as to maximize what we can learn’ (p. 126). Also, other scholars confirmed that purposeful sampling enables researchers to choose information-rich cases for the study, which contributes to making thick descriptions of the lived experiences under investigation and generating an in-depth insight and understanding of the research questions (Creswell, 2014; Duff, 2012; Miles & Huberman, 1994). Eventually, we recruited four novice EFL writing teachers as the participants, who signed the Consent Form, which accorded with the recommendation that case study should include no more than four or five participants (Creswell, 2013; Dörnyei, 2007). These four teachers, whose first language (L1) was Chinese, were fully employed in their universities.

As shown in Table 1, variations existed among the four teachers. First, there was a gender imbalance. That is, one teacher was male and the other three were female. Second, they graduated from different types of universities. Specifically, two graduated from comprehensive universities, while the other two from a normal university and a university of science and technology, respectively. Finally, the four teachers differed in terms of overseas study experiences and training experiences in teaching EFL writing. In spite of the variations, they had homogeneity in academic qualification, all holding a master’s degree. In addition, although they were specialized in different fields such as applied linguistics, literature, and translation, such fields were English-related. More importantly, they worked in a similar EFL teaching context in mainland China, which was introduced in the research context.

Table 1.

Participating teachers’ profile.

Teacher	Gender	Teaching experience (years)	Academic qualification	Major	University types teachers graduated	Overseas study experiences	Training experiences in EFL writing
Lu	Female	1	Master	Applied linguistics	Normal	None	None
Mei	Female	3	Master	Translation	Comprehensive	None	Twice through workshops
Bin	Male	3	Master	Literature	Science and technology	None	Once through an academic seminar
Hui	Female	2	Master	Linguistics and applied linguistics	comprehensive	4 months	None

Aside from the four teacher participants, our study included 40 English major sophomores (6 males and 34 females) from the four teachers’ classes. All these students were Mandarin Chinese speakers and their ages varied from 19 to 21. They had on average 11 years of English learning experiences. Furthermore, they received their primary and secondary education in mainland China without overseas learning experiences. On the basis of their examination scores at the end of the last semester and our discussions with the four teachers, we came to a decision that these students be best described as intermediate EFL learners.

4 Data collection

This study included two main sources of data: students’ writing drafts with teacher written feedback, and transcripts of individual semi-structured interviews. In addition, some complementary data were collected from documents such as teachers’ teaching plans, writing course syllabuses, and the TEM-4 writing rubric.

a Students’ writing samples

Collecting students’ marked scripts can provide direct evidence for the different aspects of teachers’ written feedback practices such as feedback scope, feedback strategy, and feedback focus (Lee, 2009; Mao & Crosthwaite, 2019). Therefore, we gathered 40 marked essays (10 for each teacher). These texts contained 150 to 200 words and were completed by English major sophomores with a 40-minute time limit in class. During the writing process, students did not have access to any external resources. The collected writing assignments were argumentative writing, the prompts for which came from TEM-4 past papers. Argumentative writing is a widely used genre to assess L2 learners’ writing proficiency, and Chinese tertiary EFL learners tend to be required to produce pieces of argumentative writing in large-scale standardized English tests (Teng & Zhang, 2020).

b Semi-structured interviews

As an important tool in qualitative research, interview can yield rich information and bring in-depth investigation into the issues at hand (Creswell, 2014). Interview is particularly useful to collect information, which fails to be observed directly. As such, it is a widely used instrument to elicit teachers’ beliefs, since beliefs reside in teachers’ minds and are unseen thought processes (Borg, 2006, 2011). Shortly after the teachers had given their written feedback, we conducted semi-structured interviews with them. In this study, the interviews were conducted with teachers individually and each interview lasted 30 to 45 minutes. To avoid misunderstanding and to collect more information, we implemented the interviews in Chinese at the sites convenient to teachers. All the interviews were audio-recorded, upon teachers’ permission, for further analysis. As semi-structured interviews require guiding questions, we came up with a list of interview questions (see Appendix 1), which were primarily adapted from Alshahrani and Storch’s (2014) study.

5 Data analysis

a Analysis of feedback practices

Teachers’ written feedback practices are usually described as their written feedback targeting errors/problems in language, content, and organization of students’ writing (Ferris, 2002). In the practical analysis, we scrutinized the feedback points given at different locations on the written scripts. A feedback point was defined as a written intervention by teachers (Hyland, 2003), and its analysis was based on meaningful units (Cheng & Zhang, 2021a; Yu & Lee, 2014). To address the first research question, teachers’ written feedback practices were analysed with respect to the themes of the focus, strategy, and scope.

First, all the identified feedback points were analysed according to the errors targeted, that is, whether the feedback points focused on errors in the local or global dimensions. The following scheme was adopted to examine the written feedback in terms of focus, originally proposed by Storch and Tapper (2000) and Mao and Crosthwaite (2019) (see Table 2). Second, the feedback instances were coded with regard to the strategies of feedback. Inspired by prior studies (e.g. Bitchener & Ferris, 2012; Geng, 2017; Lee, 2017; Sheen, 2011; Wang, 2015), we coded the local and global feedback points into either direct or indirect feedback (see Table 3).

Table 2.

Coding scheme for feedback focus.

Focus	Subcategory	Example
Language	grammar and vocabulary	• Writing letters have some benefits for us . . . → ‘has’ • Using phones is fitted into young people . . . → ‘suitable for’
Content	clarity, adequacy and relevance	• The meaning of this sentence is unclear. • Add another reason here. • This reason you mentioned is not relevant to the topic.
Organization	the overall structure, cohesion, coherence and paragraphing	• There is no topic sentence in this paragraph • Add ‘because’ here

Table 3.

Realizations of direct and indirect written feedback.

Strategies	Realizations	Examples
Local feedback:
Direct feedback	1. presenting the correct answers directly 2. crossing out the redundant or erroneous items 3. adding the omitted items	• In today’s society, people prefer use cell phones . . . (using) • In order to reduce to pollutant emissions . . . • When people ^ driving their private cars, the pollutant emissions are produced. (are)
Indirect feedback	1. indicating errors without metalinguistic clues 2. indicating errors with metalinguistic clues	• Imposing pollution taxes contribute to environmental protection . . . • Making friends online arises some problems . . . (word choice)
Global feedback:
Direct feedback	1. making overt corrections 2. offering specific suggestions	• And → but • Provide one more reason to demonstrate the advantages of letter writing such as it contributes to students’ Chinese writing skills.
Indirect feedback	1. indicating problems	• These details are irrelevant to the topic sentence in this paragraph.

After coding according to feedback focus and feedback strategy, the total number of written feedback instances provided by each teacher, as well as the numbers of local and global feedback points, and direct and indirect feedback points were tallied. In this way, whether the teachers provided feedback comprehensively or selectively can be determined.

To maintain the reliability of coding teachers’ written feedback practices, an EFL writing teacher with a master’s degree in applied linguistics, who did not participate in our study, was invited to check the coding. She and the first author selected randomly and coded independently 10 out of 40 writing samples. The inter-coder reliability measured by Pearson correlation coefficients reached an acceptable level: feedback focus (r = 0.92), feedback strategy (r = 0.88), and feedback scope (r = 0.97). To further improve the coding reliability, any disagreements in coding were discussed until they were resolved. Given such inter-coder reliability, the first author coded the rest of data by himself.

b Analysis of teachers’ beliefs

To explore teachers’ written feedback beliefs, the interview data were transcribed verbatim, after which the transcripts were sent to the four case teachers for verification. All the transcripts were analysed manually. We read and re-read the interview transcripts in order to obtain a general picture of the data. After gaining sufficient familiarity with the interview data, thematic analysis was used to analyse the teachers’ beliefs (Merriam, 2002). As a widely used approach to processing qualitative data, thematic analysis identifies, analyses, and categorizes patterns or themes within the data, which can provide a detailed account of the dataset (Braun & Clark, 2006). In analysing the data, we followed the steps of data reduction, data display, conclusion drawing and verification, as recommended in Miles and Huberman (1994). In the initial coding, the interview data were reduced through only coding information related to teachers’ beliefs about written feedback. In the second-level coding, the data were coded according to the three pre-determined recurring themes from current literature: feedback focus, feedback scope, and feedback strategy together with sub-themes for each major theme. For example, ‘teachers should provide feedback targeting different types of errors in writing’ was initially coded as teachers’ beliefs in comprehensive feedback and then developed into beliefs about feedback scope. In the third-level, the four participants’ beliefs were related and compared along the three themes. To avoid missing other important themes, the coding of the interview data was also open to new themes that might emerge from the interviews.

c Analysis of belief-practice relationships

To address research question 3, the data from students’ writing samples and semi-structured interviews were employed. We juxtaposed what the participating teachers said about written feedback in the interviews with what they actually did on their students’ writing samples. By doing so, the relationships between their beliefs and practices regarding written feedback could be identified and established.

IV Results

1 Chinese novice EFL writing teachers’ actual written feedback practices

a Feedback focus

As shown in Table 4, the four teachers provided a total of 786 feedback points on their students’ writing, focusing on both local and global issues. Specifically, of these feedback instances, 691 feedback points (87.91%) were given to local issues, while 95 points (12.09%) were related to global issues, with a significant difference in distribution (χ² = 451.93, df = 1, p = .000), indicating that the teachers showed a stronger focus on local issues when providing written feedback. As Examples 1 and 2 show, they provided such feedback to draw students’ attention to the accurate use of grammar and vocabulary. They corrected different types of errors in language use such as parts of speech, articles, singularity/plurality, subject–verb agreement, and word choices.

Table 4.

Teachers’ local and global written feedback.

Teacher	Local feedback		Global feedback		Total
Teacher	Grammar	Vocabulary	Content	Organization	Total
Mei	149	35	20	6	210
Lu	125	47	13	9	194
Hui	133	38	17	13	201
Bin	121	43	11	6	181
Total	528	163	61	34	786

Example 1:

Student text From the individual level, volunteering also have advantages. As for volunteers themselves, they make contribution to the society. It is also a way of gaining social experience. They spare their time to participate meaning activities, through which they can have a good understanding of society. What’s more, it is a way of learning new knowledge, strengthen confidence and getting to know how to get on well with others . . .

Lu’s feedback have → has; contribution → contributions; participate → participate in; meaning → meaningful; through → by; society → the society; learning → acquiring; strengthen → strengthening

Example 2:

Student text For one thing, cleaning the dormitory is the fundamental skill which we college students need to learn. Only when we can manage ourselves, can we do something for our social. Moreover, doing laundry is also a way to relax us from our heavy study. It is the time to relief our brain. Last but not the least, of all our traditional virtue, diligent and thrifty are important for us to inherit.

Bin’s feedback the dormitory → dormitories; social → society; us → ourselves; heavy → busy; relief → relieve; brain → brains; the → the; virtue → virtues; diligent → diligence; thrifty → thrift

Additionally, the distributions of feedback on grammar and vocabulary, as well as feedback on content and organization were significantly different (χ² = 192.80, df = 1, p = .000; χ² = 7.67, df = 1, p = .006 respectively). This suggests that when the teachers corrected local errors, grammatical errors took precedence over lexical errors, and in addressing global issues they showed more concern with content than organization. Furthermore, their content feedback could be analysed into three subcategories: clarity (52/61, 85.25%), relevance (5/61, 8.20%), and adequacy (4/61, 6.56%). The distribution of feedback points across the three subcategories reached statistical significance (χ² = 74.00, df = 2, p = .000). This means that the teachers paid much more attention to clarity when responding to their students’ problems in content. Example 3 illustrates Hui’s focus on clarity when she provided feedback on content. In this extract, faced with a sentence that she could not understand, Hui underlined and commented on it to draw the student writer’s attention to his/her problem in this area.

Example 3:

Student text And there also be some measures to try to make education more academically rigorous and to tackle a culture in the education establishment . . .

Hui’s feedback Unclear meaning

Likewise, their feedback on organization could be analysed into four categories: overall structure (5/34, 14.71%), cohesion (23/34, 67.65%), coherence (2/34, 5.88%), and paragraphing (4/34, 11.76%), again with a significant difference in the distribution (χ² = 33.53, df = 3, p = .000), which indicates that novice teachers were more aware of cohesion when providing feedback on organization. As Example 4 illustrates, Hui was interested in making sure that students used appropriate pronouns to establish the anaphorical relationship. Specifically, she highlighted the pronoun ‘it’, alongside a comment to ask the student to explain what ‘it’ referred to.

Example 4:

Student text What’s more, it will do harm to teachers and schools . . .

Hui’s feedback ‘It’ refers to what?

b Feedback scope

The observed teachers opted for a comprehensive approach to feedback provision. As can be seen in Table 5, 786 feedback points were generated, which means that each text received 19.7 feedback points on average. In comparison with the length of the pieces of writing (150 to 200 words), the average number of feedback points (19.7) was large. Moreover, as shown in Table 3, these teachers offered feedback targeting errors in both local and global dimensions. This suggests that they corrected a wide array of errors instead of focusing on limited types of errors.

Table 5.

Amount of written feedback provided by the observed teachers.

Teacher	Amount
Teacher	Total	Average	Range
Mei	210	21.0	16–25
Lu	194	19.4	11–23
Hui	201	20.1	13–28
Bin	181	18.1	10–21
Total	786	19.7	10–28

Although the teachers marked their students’ texts in a rather extensive way, they did not necessarily correct each error. The following instances show that they left some errors uncorrected, either intentionally or inadvertently.

Example 5:

Student text As for me, there are two reasons support my claim . . .

Mei’s feedback No feedback

Example 6:

Student text Many students are lack of social communication experiences and they need their parents’ advices . . .

Bin’s feedback No feedback

c Feedback strategies

The Chinese novice writing teachers in our study combined both direct and indirect strategies in the provision of feedback. Table 6 illustrates that in total they gave 450 direct and 336 indirect written feedback points. Averagely, 11.3 direct and 8.4 indirect feedback points were offered for each writing sample. The numbers of direct and indirect feedback points differed significantly (χ² = 16.53, df = 1, p = .000). This means that direct written feedback outnumbered indirect feedback, even though these teachers used the two strategies concurrently.

Table 6.

Teachers’ direct and indirect feedback.

Teacher	Local issues		Global issues		Total
Teacher	Direct	Indirect	Direct	Indirect	Total
Mei	103	81	7	19	210
Lu	95	77	8	14	194
Hui	126	45	10	20	201
Bin	96	68	5	12	181
Total	420	271	30	65	786

More interestingly, teachers’ choices of feedback strategies varied with feedback focus (i.e. error types). They were used to delivering direct written feedback (60.78%) to local errors. In contrast, when responding to global issues in students’ writing, they showed a preference for the indirect strategy (68.42%). The examples below illustrate how teachers addressed local and global issues respectively.

Example 7:

Student text When they were taken out of school, students ^ have chances to expand their outlooks . . .

Hui’s feedback were → are; have → ^ will have

Example 8:

Student text Cell phone has become an item that we have to hold one recently. Almost everyone has a cell phone . . .

Mei’s feedback phone → phones; have to → need to; one → one

Example 9:

Student text Moreover, when people use phones frequently, they do not know how to write letters . . .

Mei’s feedback There is a lack of supporting details for this topic sentence.

Example 10:

Student text Omitted because of length

Lu’s feedback You only provide one reason to support your claim. Is it enough?

In Example 7, Hui wrote the correct form and added an omitted word to formulate direct feedback in relation to linguistic errors. Example 8 shows that Mei’s direct feedback was realized by the provision of correct answers and the deletion of an unnecessary item. It appears that the teachers incorporated at least two of the techniques listed in Table 3 to formulate direct feedback on local issues. Example 9 demonstrates Mei’s indirect response to an issue in organization. Specifically, she merely underlined what she thought was problematic along with a metalinguistic comment, alerting the student to the problem. Similarly, in responding to a problem related to lack of adequacy, Lu made a comment at the end of a student’s essay and questioned whether one reason was sufficient for his/her reasoning, without making any corrections or suggestions for improvement.

2 Chinese novice EFL writing teachers’ written feedback beliefs

a Beliefs about feedback scope

Three out of four teachers (Mei, Lu, and Hui) favored a comprehensive approach, although for different reasons. As Mei stated, her preference for comprehensive written feedback arose because she felt a sense of responsibility as a teacher. From her point of view, writing teachers assumed the responsibility to improve students’ overall writing performance, rather than only certain areas of their writing. To fulfill such a responsibility, comprehensive feedback was more suitable. Meanwhile, Lu’s support of a comprehensive approach was due to the annual appraisal in her school. As she responded:

Other teachers in my school tend to correct a variety of errors in students’ writing. If I only focus on a limited number of errors, I will be criticized for laziness and irresponsibility. This will adversely influence my annual performance appraisal by the heads in the school, which impedes my professional career.

Finally, Hui was in supportive of comprehensive written feedback because of her concern that if teachers corrected students’ errors selectively, it was very likely that those uncorrected errors might become fossilized:

If teachers leave some types of errors unmarked, these errors will be ignored and cannot be identified by many students, especially low-achieving students. Thus, they are very likely to repeat these errors constantly in the follow-up writing.

As an exception, Bin believed that focused feedback was superior to comprehensive feedback. In the interview, he expressed his belief that focused written feedback was more beneficial for L2 students’ writing development. With such feedback, some errors/problems remained untouched, which provided students with opportunities to identify and correct errors/problems on their own. Additionally, he also attributed his belief to the context: ‘Large class sizes constrain me from adopting a comprehensive approach, as it is enormously time- and energy-consuming to correct a variety of errors for everybody in the class of over 30 students. In this situation, selective feedback should be encouraged.’

b Beliefs about feedback focus

The majority of teachers (Lu, Bin, and Hui) emphasized that teachers should give more importance to global issues when providing feedback. Lu ascribed this belief to students’ needs. As she mentioned:

In comparison with linguistic errors, it is more difficult for students to identify and solve problems in content and organization independently. Thus, they probably need more feedback on global issues.

Although Bin and Hui both espoused global written feedback in their belief systems, they presented a different reason. From their perspectives, as two distinctively different languages, Chinese and English had many differences in writing conventions in terms of the global areas of writing. In order to overcome the negative transfer of Chinese writing style, global issues should be stressed. As Bin noted:

Influenced by the rhetoric style in Chinese writing, many students do not cultivate the awareness of paragraphing, cohesion, and coherence. In this sense, students need feedback on global areas to inform them of how to structure and express ideas in an appropriate way.

However, Mei believed that local issues deserved more attention when teachers delivered feedback to students. As she explained, grammar and vocabulary were the basic units of writing. If there were many errors related to them, a piece of writing would be incomprehensible even if it contained outstanding ideas and appropriate organization.

c Beliefs about feedback strategies

Teachers’ beliefs about the strategies of written feedback varied. Among the four teachers, Mei and Lu both agreed that it was more appropriate for teachers to use direct written feedback. For example, Mei said in the interview:

It is more advisable to offer correct answers to students when teachers mark writing because this strategy can not only draw students’ attention to errors but also enable them to understand how to correct errors immediately, particularly those complex ones.

Obviously, Mei believed that direct feedback was an appropriate strategy to provide feedback, since it had merits in terms of drawing students’ attention to their errors and helping them understand how to perform error correction.

As for Lu, her belief in direct feedback was based on her prior learning experiences. As she noted:

When I was a student at school, my teachers always corrected our errors in writing directly, and we considered it a good way to deliver feedback, as we could understand the correct answers instantly. From then on, I believed that teachers should provide their students with direct feedback.

In contrast, Hui supported the use of indirect feedback. As she explained in the interview, although indirect feedback was less understandable than direct feedback, it contributed to students’ engagement with teacher written feedback. She argued that such an engagement not only provided students with opportunities to reflect on their errors profoundly, but also developed their self-editing ability, which would benefit students’ writing development in the long run.

Finally, Bin stated that direct and indirect feedback strategies should be combined in written feedback provision, since this strategy would satisfy students’ needs to the greatest extent. From his perspective, Chinese EFL writing classrooms were populated by students with varying English proficiency and they should be treated differently. In this sense, Bin took into account his students’ needs in the formation of his belief about feedback strategies.

3 The extent to which teachers’ beliefs match their actual practices

As shown by Table 7, seven aspects of what teachers said in interviews were compared with what they actually did. Examining the individual teachers’ espoused beliefs and actual practices and considering them independently, we found that the belief-practice relationships were complicated, matches and mismatches coexisting.

Table 7.

Relationships between teachers’ beliefs and practices.

Beliefs	Practices
	Mei	Lu	Hui	Bin
Strategy:
1. It is an appropriate strategy to provide feedback directly.	✗	✗	n/a	n/a
2. Teachers should provide indirect feedback.	n/a	n/a	✗	n/a
3. Direct and indirect feedback strategies should be integrated in practice.	n/a	n/a	n/a	√
Focus:
4. Feedback should focus on local issues in students’ writing.	√	n/a	n/a	n/a
5. Teachers should pay more attention to global issues.	n/a	✗	✗	✗
Scope:
6. Teachers should respond to a wide range of errors in feedback provision.	√	√	√	n/a
7. Focused feedback is superior to comprehensive feedback.	n/a	n/a	n/a	✗

Notes. √ = match; ✗ = mismatch; n/a = not applied.

We based on certain criteria to classify teachers’ belief-practice relationships for each theme. Specifically, in relation to feedback strategy, we assumed that if a teacher espoused the utilization of direct/indirect feedback, he/she would employ the corresponding feedback strategy predominantly. For each teacher, the number of direct feedback was compared with that of indirect feedback via chi-square tests. Accordingly, two teachers (Mei, Lu), whose beliefs in direct feedback, were identified as mismatch cases, since the number of direct and indirect feedback they provided did not differ significantly (Mei: p = .490; Lu: p = .389). More interestingly, despite Hui believing in indirect feedback, she gave much more direct feedback than indirect feedback (136 vs. 65, p = .000), indicating a mismatch between her beliefs and practices. In contrast, Bin, supporting the combination of direct and indirect feedback in his belief system, produced similar number of these two types of feedback (p = .119). As for feedback focus, we took the similar approach to explore the relationships in this theme. This led to three cases of mismatches in the teachers (Lu, Bin, and Hui), who provided much more feedback on local than global areas (172 vs. 22; 171 vs. 30; 164 vs. 17, respectively). One exception was Mei, as her belief in local issues matched her real practice (184 vs. 26). Regarding feedback scope, we made the assumption that if a teacher believed in focused/comprehensive feedback, he/she would do so actually. After the examination of their actual practices, three teachers (Mei, Lu, and Hui) were listed in the match category, since they translated their beliefs into actual practices of providing a great many feedback points, which focused on different types of issues in both local and global dimensions of EFL writing. However, the opposite was applied to Bin, who claimed the superiority of focused feedback but provided comprehensive feedback.

To summarize, these teachers’ beliefs regarding feedback scope were largely in line with their real practices, with the three teachers who believed in a comprehensive feedback approach marking students’ writing in an extensive way. Cases of mismatches are worth attention as well. Most teachers advocated that teachers should focus on global issues when providing feedback; however, feedback on local issues predominated in their actual feedback provision. Moreover, teachers’ beliefs about feedback strategies did not echo their practices. Three teachers integrated both direct and indirect feedback strategies although they did not believe so.

V Discussion

1 Chinese novice EFL writing teachers’ written feedback practices

Regarding feedback focus, teachers placed more emphasis on local issues (language) in comparison with global issues when providing feedback. The finding is commonly seen in prior studies (e.g. Junqueira & Payant, 2015; Mao & Crosthwaite, 2019; Montgomery & Baker, 2007). In the present study, teachers’ meticulous correction of errors in language may be associated with their previous English learning experiences. As discussed above, these teachers as non-native English speakers learned English primarily in L2 classrooms where they were taught through a grammar-translation approach, which accentuates linguistic rules and the accuracy of language forms (Jin & Cortazzi, 2006; Rao & Li, 2017). Given that the participants were novice teachers whose teaching behaviors are deeply impacted by their learning experiences (Tsui, 2009; Yu et al., 2020), they probably valued linguistic accuracy highly in practice, thereby resulting in much more feedback on linguistic errors.

Our study also revealed the particular nature of global and local written feedback provided by the novice EFL writing teachers. With respect to global feedback, these teachers showed more concern with content problems. This is in line with findings in Junqueira and Payant (2015) and Montgomery and Baker (2007). As regards local feedback, more attention was paid to grammatical errors than lexical ones. This finding echoes findings from previous studies (e.g. Alshahrani & Storch, 2014; Mao & Crosthwaite, 2019). One possible explanation is that the students involved in our study were intermediate EFL learners, who tended to commit many grammatical errors, so a larger number of grammatical errors than lexical errors probably occurred. Another potential explanation is that many grammatical errors tend to be grouped into ‘treatable errors’, which can be explained and corrected in a patterned and rule-based way. In contrast, lexical errors are ‘untreatable errors’, which are idiosyncratic in nature and cannot be explained by rules (Ferris, 2002). Thus, it is relatively easy for teachers to correct grammatical errors for students, which may trigger more feedback on grammar.

The findings of the present study suggest that the inexperienced teachers implemented comprehensive written feedback, targeting various types of errors. Such a finding may be explained by their strong beliefs about the importance of comprehensive written feedback. For instance, two case teachers explicitly stated that such feedback could help students avoid fossilization of errors and improve their overall writing performance.

However, our finding is at odds with Mao and Crosthwaite’s (2019), where Chinese university EFL teachers provided written feedback in a focused approach. Such a difference is not unexpected. Specifically, the participants in their study were experienced writing teachers, who had probably accumulated more professional skills and pedagogical content knowledge about feedback provision (see e.g. Gao & Zhang, 2020). This might empower them to attempt at focused feedback, a comparatively new approach to feedback provision. In contrast, our study focused on novice EFL writing teachers. Since such teachers tend to base their pedagogical practices on their prior learning experiences (Duffin et al., 2012; Levin, 2015), the participants in our study employed the traditional approach (i.e. comprehensive feedback) when offering written feedback. As prior studies have shown, novice teachers tend to follow familiar routines and practices in teaching (Kang & Cheng, 2014; Urmston & Pennington, 2008).

Echoing the prior literature (e.g. Mao & Crosthwaite, 2019; Zheng & Yu, 2018), we also found that teachers did not use either direct or indirect feedback exclusively. Instead, they combined the two strategies, although there were more direct feedback points in number. This mixture of direct and indirect feedback strategies corresponds to Bitchener and Storch’s (2016) suggestion that neither direct nor indirect feedback in isolation is the best for learning.

Importantly, error types complicated teachers’ selections of feedback strategies. When responding to global issues, teachers tended to use indirect feedback without suggestions or corrections. This practice may be attributable to two plausible reasons. One is the inconvenience of addressing global issues directly. Offering direct feedback to global issues requires teachers to take into consideration information beyond one sentence (Lee, 1997). Another is the nature of global issues. Issues related to content and organization ‘are not about being right or wrong’ (Wang, 2015, p. 218). Thus, there are probably several solutions to one specific global problem. This means that it is unsuitable for teachers to adopt a direct strategy to treat global issues. If they do so, they may appropriate students’ own texts (Hyland & Hyland, 2001).

In contrast, they frequently corrected linguistic errors directly, as found in previous studies (e.g. Lee, 2009; Zheng & Yu, 2018). However, the proportion of direct feedback in our study was lower than that in Lee’s (2009, 2011) studies. Such an inconsistency may be ascribed to the participating students’ English proficiency. The students involved in our study were university English major students, whose English proficiency was higher than the secondary school students in Lee’s studies. Generally, higher language proficiency enables students to interpret indirect feedback more successfully (Ferris, 2002), which may invite more indirect feedback. However, the teachers’ use of direct feedback to correct errors in language does not corroborate the result in Alshahrani and Storch (2014) that indirect written feedback predominated. This inconsistent finding is possibly because in their study teachers’ practices were affected by the school policy, which strictly required teachers to provide feedback indirectly.

Overall, Chinese novice EFL writing teachers’ feedback practices in our study seem to be teacher-centered and teacher-led, evidenced by their comprehensive approach to providing written feedback and their provision of a great many direct feedback points, while their students did not appear to share the responsibility to detect and correct errors by themselves. Such a finding is probably related to how education is valued in Chinese culture. As discussed earlier, under the influence of traditional Chinese culture, the Chinese education system stresses the role of teachers and underplays students’ agency in learning. As such, teachers are typically regarded as knowledge experts and can decide what to teach and how to teach it, whereas their students are the passive recipients of knowledge (Bao, 2019; (Sun & Zhang, 2021) Wu et al., 2021).

2 Chinese novice EFL writing teachers’ written feedback beliefs and the extent to which their beliefs match their actual practices

Consistent with the previous literature on teachers’ beliefs and practices in language teaching (e.g. Bao, 2019; Farrell & Ives, 2015; Roothooft, 2014), our study revealed instances of convergence and divergence between teachers’ beliefs and practices regarding written feedback. On the one hand, most teachers’ beliefs in a comprehensive approach to providing feedback were mirrored by their actual practices. Such an alignment is also observed in prior studies conducted in other contexts such as a Saudi EFL university setting and Hong Kong secondary EFL contexts (e.g. Alkhatib, 2015; Lee, 2011), which suggests that teachers’ beliefs serve as an indicator to predict their classroom practices (Borg, 2006, 2011). The consistency between teachers’ beliefs and their practices in scope of written feedback indicates that they preferred comprehensive written feedback and saw it as an important approach to providing feedback. As Van Beuningen (2010) explained, the importance of comprehensive feedback lies in its potentiality in improving L2 learners’ general writing performance.

In our study, even though these early career writing teachers presented different reasons for their beliefs about comprehensive feedback, their beliefs were still likely to be subtly influenced by traditional Chinese culture, which defines a teacher as ‘a person who propagates doctrines, imparts professional knowledge and resolves doubts’ (Li, 2014, p. 4), an expression that has been taught in the Chinese textbooks for generations, 古之学者必有师。师者，所以传道受业解惑也 (Gǔ zhī xuézhě bì yǒu shī. Shī zhě, suǒyǐ chuándào shòuyè jiě huò yě). As such, teachers are expected to correct different errors that students make in order to resolve their doubts, thus ensuring their all-round development in learning. It is considered irresponsible for teachers to overlook their students’ errors.

On the other hand, belief-practice dissonances occurred in feedback focus and feedback strategies. In terms of feedback focus, three teachers agreed that global issues should be prioritized in feedback provision. Two factors contributed to their beliefs. One was students’ needs. This is understandable, since L2 learners tend to lack knowledge of English discourse features (Hinkel, 2002). From a theoretical perspective, this belief is attuned to students’ zone of proximal development (ZPD; Vygotsky, 1978), since students probably cannot solve global problems independently and they need teachers’ scaffolding in this respect.

Another reason was disparities between the Chinese and English rhetoric styles in writing and such differences have been reported in intercultural rhetoric (Kaplan, 1966; Kirkpatrick, 1997). Specifically, Chinese writing prefers an indirect and inductive approach to organization, while English writing, based on Aristotelian classical rhetoric, favors a straightforward and deductive structure. However, our feedback analysis indicated that a great deal of feedback was delivered in response to linguistic errors. Our finding regarding the mismatch between novice teachers’ beliefs and practices in feedback focus corresponds to previous studies in ESL settings in the US (Junqueira & Payant, 2015; Montgomery & Baker, 2007), Hong Kong secondary EFL contexts (Lee, 2009), and a mainland Chinese EFL context with experienced teachers (Mao & Crosthwaite, 2019), where teachers overestimated the amount of global feedback while underestimated the amount of local feedback.

The belief-practice mismatch can also be seen in the strategies of feedback. Teachers held divergent beliefs about direct and indirect feedback, but they all mixed both direct and indirect strategies in practice. This finding aligns with Alkhatib’s (2015) study, which was implemented in a tertiary EFL context in Saudi. Our teachers’ differing beliefs about feedback strategies correspond to the inconclusive findings regarding the relative effectiveness of direct and indirect feedback in (quasi-) experimental studies (Chandler, 2003; Lalande, 1982; Van Beuningen et al., 2012). In our study, two teachers espoused direct feedback; for example, Mei explained her belief with regard to the strengths of direct feedback. That is, such feedback prompts students to understand how to correct errors immediately. This corresponds with Chandler (2003), who maintained that a direct feedback strategy helps students internalize correct forms instantly. The two teachers’ beliefs about feedback strategies may be also related to the Chinese teaching and learning culture, in which teachers are required to be highly responsible for their students’ learning. In this sense, they should make their students have a good understanding of their errors and how to address them. Under the influence of this culture, teachers probably support the use of direct feedback in their belief systems. In contrast, Hui believed in the use of an indirect feedback strategy, arguing that it benefited students’ long-term L2 writing development. Her justification illuminates the importance of indirect feedback, which ‘requires students to engage in guided learning and problem solving and, as a result, promotes the type of reflection, noticing and attention that is more likely to foster long-term acquisition’ (Bitchener & Knoch, 2008, p. 415). As for Bin, he emphasized the value of combining direct and indirect feedback strategies based on his students’ needs. His belief demonstrates that teachers’ selections of strategies to provide feedback is mediated by students, who are stakeholders in feedback provision. It also coincides with the recommendation that teachers should experiment with different feedback strategies to accommodate their students’ needs (Bitchener & Ferris, 2012; Lee, 2017).

Such tensions between teachers’ beliefs and practices in our study possibly manifest that novice teachers forwent some of their self-held beliefs in practice and then they might follow some familiar routines, which were not underpinned by their beliefs in the actual teaching (Kang & Cheng, 2014; Urmston & Pennington, 2008). For example, Bin opted for comprehensive feedback in his actual practice, despite his belief in focused feedback. This finding can be interpreted in accordance with the role that novice teachers play in the teaching process. It might be that novice teachers reshaped their belief systems and even espoused their disbeliefs to respond to ‘the changing situations and external constraints and stimulus’ (Yu et al., 2020, p. 11). Such a finding also suggests the differences between experienced and novice teachers. Specifically, unlike veteran teachers whose beliefs tend to be firm and well-established (Tsui, 2009), novice teachers’ beliefs may be tenuous, non-tenacious and they possibly reform such beliefs according to the realities of classrooms (Huang et al., 2021).

These belief-practice tensions are probably because of teachers’ limited teaching experience. It has been reported that teaching experience influences the ease with which teachers can enact their beliefs in their actual teaching (Basturkmen et al., 2004; Kartchava et al., 2020). Understandably, with insufficient teaching experience, the novice teachers in our study might find it difficult to realize their espoused beliefs in practice (Basturkmen et al., 2004; Sun & Zhang, 2021). The tensions might also be attributed to a range of contextual constraints such as teachers’ tight work schedule and large class sizes. Different from seasoned teachers, novice teachers are not able to balance different demands from their working contexts (Duffin et al., 2012), so they are much more vulnerable to contextual constraints within their pedagogical contexts (Levin, 2015). Consequently, when facing conflicts between beliefs and contexts, the novice participants possibly sacrificed their fragile beliefs for satisfying the requirements imposed on them by their contexts, in order to survive during the early years of their careers (Yu et al., 2020).

To sum up, our study revealed a complex and nonlinear relationship between novice teachers’ written feedback beliefs and practices in the Chinese EFL context. One possible factor contributing to the complexity of this belief-practice relationship was traditional Chinese culture. As discussed above, this factor may have a profound influence on shaping teachers’ beliefs and practices. Generally, teachers follow those principles and norms, which are highly valued by the culture, and translate them into their teaching beliefs and practices. However, novice teachers’ beliefs and practices were also influenced by other potential factors such as their insufficient teaching experience and contextual constraints. Due to the interaction of teachers’ cultural background and other factors, there were matches and mismatches between their beliefs and practices about written feedback.

VI Conclusions

This multiple-case study examined four novice teachers’ espoused beliefs and actual practices regarding written feedback in Chinese tertiary EFL writing classrooms. The findings reveal the complexity of teachers’ beliefs and practices about written feedback. The teachers’ beliefs in comprehensive written feedback were fully translated into their actual practices. However, they placed much more emphasis on local issues, despite believing that teachers should focus on global issues in feedback provision. Additionally, they used both direct and indirect feedback strategies concurrently in practice, while they did not espouse such a belief.

Based on these findings, we can afford to offer several pedagogical implications fully cognizant of the complexity of L2 writing (Ferris, 2002; Hyland, 2003; Khezrlou, 2020). First, since our study showed mismatches between teachers’ written feedback beliefs and practices, we suggest that novice EFL writing teachers hold a critical and reflective attitude towards the written feedback belief-practice relationships. They should examine their beliefs about written feedback in different dimensions (e.g. scope, focus, and strategy), and observe their actual practices by scrutinizing the feedback that they offer on their students’ writing or by communicating their practices with experienced colleagues to determine the extent to which their beliefs match their actual practices. Reflection on beliefs and practices may enable teachers to have a better understanding of their beliefs, make sense of their teaching behaviors, minimize the belief-practice divergence, and maximize their teaching efficacy.

Second, we found that the inexperienced writing teachers in our study had not received systematic training in teaching EFL writing, and some recommendations such as the balanced coverage of both local and global issues in feedback provision (Ferris, 2014; Lee, 2017), were not translated into their actual practices. Thus, it is imperative that teacher education programs, and professional learning and development opportunities be initiated by university administrators to inform these teachers about how to carry out written feedback more effectively. Workshops and seminars could be organized to help them optimize their strategies and approaches to providing written feedback in their specific instructional settings, so as to enhance the scaffolding role of written feedback. In addition to the support from university administrators, teacher educators and L2 writing researchers should play a role. They could provide novice writing teachers with suggestions on how to develop pedagogical content knowledge and skills in providing written feedback. Such suggestions could improve their feedback literacy. Also, they could scaffold such teachers in terms of how to cope with the negative influence of contextual constraints on providing written feedback, which would enable them to implement pedagogical practices underpinned by their beliefs and enhance the efficacy of their written feedback.

Understandably, this study is not free from limitations. One is the limitation inherent in case study. Due to the practical constraints, we only included four participants with the same academic qualification (i.e. master’s degree), which consequently restricts the generalizability of our study. Accordingly, further studies need to enlarge the sample size and diversify the participants’ backgrounds, which would contribute to a holistic understanding of novice teachers’ beliefs and practices regarding written feedback in the Chinese tertiary EFL contexts. Another limitation is that our study mainly depended on data from teachers’ on-script written feedback and semi-structured interviews, without including other data source such as stimulated recall or think-aloud. Data from these introspective sources might yield additional information about the factors influencing teachers’ written feedback practices, which might account for our observed belief-practice mismatches. Finally, this study investigated teachers’ beliefs and practices within a short timeframe, failing to explore them dynamically and longitudinally. Further studies might need to address these limitations to generate richer findings about EFL writing teachers’ written feedback beliefs and practices.

Footnotes

Appendix 1. Guiding interview questions

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iDs

Xiaolong Cheng

Lawrence Jun Zhang

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