University students' perceptions of rubric-referenced peer and teacher feedback on EFL writing

The aim of the study is to find and discuss university students' perceptions of rubric-referenced peer and teacher feedback on EFL writing. This study also finds out the students' self-efficacy in EFL paragraph writing and their opinions about the use of a rubric in the peer and teacher feedback practice. To this end, five main research questions were addressed. Quantitative data in this study were gathered via questionnaires administered to participants on two occasions: At the beginning and end of the course. The quantitative data from feedback questionnaires consist of sixty-three Turkish EFL learners' and self-efficacy data consist of fifty-five Turkish EFL learners. The qualitative data include reflective essay and interview. Both of them conducted at the end of the treatment. Sixty-four Turkish EFL learners' reflective essays and twenty interviewees' results were considered. Information gathered from the surveys was processed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 22, applying both descriptive and inferential statistical methods for analysis. To see the difference between the questionnaires, feedback and self-efficacy, dependent sample t-Test was employed. The Pearson correlation coefficient was then computed to examine the correlation between these two questionnaires. The qualitative analysis of both reflective essays and interview transcripts in this study was guided by an initial coding scheme based on Wang (2014). The findings of qualitative data revealed that while rubric-based peer feedback process has led to significant improvements in various aspects of students' EFL writing skills, there was no significant improvement was found in terms of teacher feedback. These findings indicate that the rubric-based training program did not have a marked effect on enhancing students' self-efficacy perceptions in English writing skills. The qualitative findings showed that peers' perceived usefulness of peer feedback for draft revision was affected by four factors: (1) Students' attitudes towards peer feedback practice; (2) Students limited English proficiency; (3) Students' knowledge of assigned paragraph topics (4) Students' concerns with objectivity. Both reflective essays and interview data demonstrated that student had a positive perception to teacher feedback and rubric. They have indicated that the rubric guided them and contributed to their ability to evaluate their own written paragraphs. In the concluding section, the author provides insights on how the use of feedback can be adopted in the Turkish EFL writing sessions and suggestions for the future research. Keywords: Efl Writing, Peer Feedback, Rubric, Self-Efficacy, Teacher Feedback