Complementation of multiple sources of feedback in EFL learners’ writing

As L2 writers receive diverse sources of feedback in their writing process, it is important to understand how these sources complement one another. The present study compared Chinese teacher feedback, Chinese peer feedback, and American student feedback provided on the same drafts of 17 Chinese EFL students’ film reviews. The three sources were found to have complemented in feedback points, areas, and strategies. Specifically, all three sources provided high rates of non-overlapped feedback points and more local and form-focused feedback. Further, the teacher provided the most form-focused local feedback and used an indirect feedback strategy most frequently. In contrast, American students and Chinese peers focused more on meaning-oriented local feedback and used a direct feedback strategy more frequently. Mediated by student writers’ contrastive perceptions of the three feedback sources and feedback quality, American student feedback led to the highest rates of successful uptake, manifesting the superiority of cross-cultural feedback in quality, uptake, and student perceptions. This paper concludes by drawing pedagogical implications and suggesting future directions for exploring the complementation of feedback sources.