A case study of Hong Kong college students’ engagement with teacher’s written corrective feedback in EFL writing classroom.

Given the widespread use of written corrective feedback (WCF) in L2 writing, WCF has been an important research topic for decades. Although L2 writing scholars and educators have generally acknowledged the merits of WCF, little research has directly compared the relative efficacy of focused and unfocused WCF, and there is even less research on lower-proficiency level EFL students’ engagement with the two types of WCF. The current case study, which is part of a larger mixed-method research project on the effects of focused and unfocused WCF on EFL writing learners at a self-financed college in Hong Kong, aimed to investigate students’ engagement with teachers' WCF and its impacts on their linguistic accuracy in subsequent revision and new writing. Six students were recruited from two intact classes of an 8-week intensive course on English professional communication. For each participant student, data were collected from multiple sources including 7 compositions (4 pieces of new writing and 3 pieces of revision), teachers’ WCF on their writing, and 4 semi-structured interviews which were conducted at different points over the course. The findings show that the participants' engagement with WCF was influenced by their metalinguistic knowledge, level of learning (deep versus superficial), and writing conditions (revision versus new writing). The study has also suggested that focused WCF was more beneficial for the students as it was more manageable cognitively. The students who received focused WCF were more likely to facilitate deep learning and made a greater improvement in both revisions and new writing.