Less is More or More Is More? A Qualitative Study on EFL Teachers' Views and Preferences Regarding Comprehensive and Selective Feedback

Abstract

There are decades of research on teachers’ views on the topic of comprehensive and selective feedback, but there is a large gap in said research regarding Swedish upper secondary school teachers. This study is an attempt to start to bridge that gap by interviewing five upper secondary school English teachers about their beliefs and views regarding both the subject of comprehensiveness, as well as their more general feedback views. The results show among other things that unlike teachers in previous research, these participants are clear advocates for selective feedback, and also gave reasons for why this might be. These reasons were mainly connected to the content they were teaching and the individual needs and differences of the students. It was also found that the teachers had a similar view of the main function of feedback, as well as similar views of when in the writing process it should be provided. Influences on the participants’ feedback production were also mentioned, and both individual experience, colleagues and in-service training were mentioned as factors that had affected the way these teachers gave feedback. Finally, a discussion comparing the results from this study with the previous research and a discussion regarding the pedagogical implications of the results is conducted.