Developing syntactic complexity in writing through one-to-one feedback

Writing is, as one of the most important productive skills in language learning, considered challenging and demanding fort both learners and teachers, particularly in English as foreign language (EFL) contexts. Besides, most students might feel reluctant for writing due to the several reasons such as having low-grades or lack of self-confidence. However, there might be some ways to overcome these difficulties. One of these ways is to give feedback their writings. Therefore, the present study aimed at investigating the syntactical development of the English Language Teaching (ELT) students through one-to-one feedback. The number of the participants in this study were 18 students majoring in ELT Department in one of the university in Turkey. Nine of the participants received regular feedback and the rest did not receive feedback. The participants wrote reflection on some topics and received one-to-one feedbacks in six-week period. Note-taking technique was used to explore participants' development, one-to-one interviews and students' reflections about one-to-one feedback were used to gather data. Results revealed that one-to-one feedback improve students' syntactic ability in writing process.