EFL students' response to the teacher's written feedback

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] Providing written response to students' writing has been the most widely used method for English teachers to communicate with students of English in EFL/ESL contexts. However, how the EFL students perceive, prefer, and understand the teachers� written response is by no means conclusive. Researchers, educators, teachers are also puzzled by the extent to which teachers' written response influences the students' writing progress. The current study reports the findings from a mixed methods case study with 20 undergraduate Vietnamese students from an intact advanced English writing class at an urban college in Vietnam. Various types of data were collected and examined, including 24 semi-structured interviews with eight selected participants, 80 argumentative papers written within a period of ten weeks, observations, a survey questionnaire including selected-response and open-ended items, and supplementary materials. The study was designed under the theoretical framework of Second Language Acquisition, Sociocultural Perspectives, and Composition Theories on response and error. The study's aim were twofold: (1) to demystify the EFL students' perceptions of and preferences in regard to teachers' written response, and their strategies for understanding and using the response; and (2) to explore the influence of teachers� written response on the students' writing progress. The findings both echoed and contradicted the understandings found in current L2 response literature as to how the students perceive and prefer the focuses, the forms, and the types of teachers� written response, and how the teachers� written response affects the students� writing progress. The findings also indicate important implications for improvement of the L2 writing curricula and the practice of proving instructional responses in the EFL/ESL contexts.