The Relationship between EFL Students’ Writing Motivation, Self-Perceived Writing Intelligence, and Attitude toward Written Feedback

The study of individual difference variables in the realm of written feedback is one of the significant lines of research which has been reinvigorated in the last few years. These variables are believed to affect both students’ engagement with feedback and their writing improvement. The present correlational study investigated the relationship between EFL students’ implicit theories of writing intelligence, writing motivation and attitudes toward written feedback. In so doing, 110 intermediate English language learners took three questionnaires, namely Implicit Theories of Writing Intelligence, Orientation toward Corrective Feedback, and Writing Motivation. The findings of the present study indicated that EFL students’ incremental theory of writing intelligence positively correlated with their writing motivation and feedback seeking orientation. On the other hand, EFL students’ entity theory of writing intelligence negatively correlated with their writing motivation and positively correlated with their feedback avoiding orientation. In other words, those EFL learners who believed in the plasticity of their cognitive abilities were of higher writing motivation and feedback seeking orientation levels than those participants who believed that their writing ability was a fixed entity, which could not be extended.