Written Corrective Feedback in Narratives: Teacher Styles and Learners’ Responses

This qualitative study examined the written corrective feedback (WCF) style employed by an English teacher in correcting Grade 7 learners' written narratives and explored the learners’ responses to that feedback. Anchored in constructionism and symbolic interactionism, the study used a single-case design involving 20 purposively selected Grade 7 learners and one English teacher in a public secondary school. Data were gathered through learners’ original and revised written narratives, an audio-recorded in-depth interview with the teacher, and a video-recorded focus group discussion with the learners. Thematic analysis revealed that the teacher predominantly employed direct written corrective feedback through encircling, underlining, crossing out errors, explicitly correcting spelling, word choice, and verb tense, and adding words or sentences to improve construction. Learners generally preferred direct WCF because it helped them detect errors easily and understand corrections better. Their uptake was largely successful, as most were able to incorporate the teacher’s corrections into revised drafts. While some scholars question the long-term effectiveness of grammar correction, the findings of this study suggest that direct WCF remains valuable for beginner L2 writers. The results highlight the importance of scaffolding feedback within classroom writing instruction, particularly for early secondary learners.