Effects of personalized feedback with open online resources on the essay writing performance of undergraduate preparatory program students studying EFL

Since writing is the primary means of academic communication, academic writing is perhaps the most crucial talent in academic settings. For the majority of students, it is also the hardest skill to learn. In ELL, many methods and techniques have been used to improve students' writing skills. One of these methods is providing feedback on students' writing. The aim of the study was to reveal the effects of personalized feedback with open online resources on the essay writing performance of undergraduate preparatory program students studying EFL at a state university in Turkey. The study was conducted with a mixed method Explanatory Sequential Design including a quasi-experimental study employing a control and an experiment group and a pre-post test administration and interviews with students. When the possible effects of the pretest were removed from the dependent variable (post test) the means of the groups taken from the post test changed slightly. The ANCOVA test was run to identify if there were any statistically significant differences between the pretest and the post test scores of the Experimental and the Control Groups. As a result of the ANCOVA test, it was found that there was not a statistically significant difference (p=.871, p>.05) between the post test scores of the students in the experimental and control groups. In the qualitative part of the study, interviews were conducted with eight voluntary students. In the interviews, the students were asked to reflect on the personalized feedback they received. As a result of the thematic analysis employed in the examination of the qualitative data, it was found that all interviewees had positive reflections about the feedback they received. However, they also expressed that they were already using online resources in their studies.