EFL students' attitudes and reactions to feedback from American writing instructors
This presentation examines the advantages and disadvantages of On-line Writing Centers´ responses to students? writing, as perceived by a group of EFL student writers. After the history and services offered by writing centers are presented, the results of a study involving American teachers and Spanish-speaking EFL students are reported. For this study, a group of nine advanced EFL students at a teacher-training school in Cordoba, Argentina, and the On-line Writing Center consultants at Texas Tech University, in the US, established computer-mediated communication (CMC) via e-mail. The students e-mailed their compositions to the on-line writing center, and they later received comments from writing consultants. Both the students? written work and the consultants? electronic messages were collected and coded for analysis. This presentation focuses on the students´ perceptions and reactions to this new writing experience involving CMC with American instructors. The presentation also touches on cultural differences seen through the interchange.
