Teacher feedback and (re)writing in Portuguese as a Foreign Language: students’ perspective in a case study

Abstract

The purpose of this case study is to understand students’ perceptions of the writing activities and of the feedback and text revision processes that occurred in a formal teaching context of Portuguese as Foreign Language. The participants were two groups of adult students with different native languages who attended a writing course (B1-level of CEFR) in the spring semester of 2018/2019.

The data under analysis are the results of the questionnaire the students answered at the end of the semester, regarding their perceptions of the writing activities and of the feedback and text revision procedures, as far as their usefulness for language learning and related emotional aspects are concerned. The individual writing activities involved in the study included mainly reports of past events and written interaction (formal and informal emails). After writing their texts, the students received them with teacher feedback (in form of graphic marking and eventually short comments) and were asked to correct/rewrite them.

The study analyzes the students’ answers and the results indicate that students find writing activities and teacher feedback useful for language learning and prefer indirect feedback, which provides them hints to correct errors themselves. The most diverse answers are those related to the emotional aspects (nervousness associated with feedback and correction) and the answer variability is apparently due to individual factors.