As seen in this paper, in order to investigate a group of students‟ attitudes to corrective feedback and revision, and the potential that revision holds for enhancing feedback efficacy, a small case study was carried out. A group of ten students aged 12-13, attending an English language school in Italy, participated in a small writing project where they were requested to write a series of drafts which were corrected by a teacher and then obligatorily revised by the students. Before the project started the students were required to answer a few questions in a questionnaire regarding their earlier feedback experience. At the end of the project they had to answer a second questionnaire about their attitudes to revision. This small qualitative study revealed that although most students were not used to revising their writing after receiving feedback, they were mainly positive to revision. The students were confident that revisions would help them avoid the same mistakes in the future. This is an important finding, as research has shown that attitudes towards revision have an impact on the efficacy of the revision activity itself (as seen in section 1). The main problem reported by the students in their answers to the questionnaire was the fact that some students did not find the teacher‟s corrections comprehensible and were not able to revise their texts. Although the teacher was available, many students were reluctant to ask for explanations. This was particularly the case for students with a lower proficiency level, which confirms the importance of addressing learner differences when providing corrective feedback (as discussed in section 3.4). Despite the limitations of this study in terms of sample size and data collection, the results in this paper are aligned with more substantial studies, such as Ferris (2010) and Chandler (2003), which point to students‟ positive attitudes regarding the use of revision as a tool for promoting feedback efficacy and L2 learning.
Godkänt datum 2021-06-06