EFL Students' Beliefs and Processing Behaviors toward Writing and Teacher Response

This study took a cross-sectional, quantitative approach and profiled EFL students' awareness of the writing process and of teacher feedback. The subjects were 113 college students aged 19-26 years from non-English majors, who were enrolled in three sections of a required English course. According to the scores gained from the essay writing assignment, they were divided into two groups (proficient and less-proficient writers) and responded to an in-class survey. Major findings were that: (1) the vast majority of both groups did not find English writing enjoyable; (2) longer comments gave rise to substantial changes to the students' revisions; (3) the less-proficient writers were shown to benefit from revision significantly more than the proficient writers; (4) Both groups of writers utilized multiple strategies to process teacher feedback and preferred to receive teacher comments using complete sentences rather than phrases or single words; and (5) teacher's marks on grammar and vocabulary claimed to be most conducive to EFL writing development. Several important implications for EFL writing instruction and for future studies are suggested.