TEFL Master’s Degree Students’ Incorporation of Peer Feedback in Academic Texts

The examination of the literature reveals that scant attention has been paid to L2 graduate students’ engagement with feedback on their academic texts. To fill this gap in the literature, the current study investigated the engagement of 53 TEFL master’s degree students with peer comments using a host of data collection and analysis tools, including eye-tracking, stimulated recall interviews, and content analysis. The participants exchanged computer-mediated comments on an academic writing task (i.e., thesis proposal) and were asked to revise their texts based on these comments while their eye movements were being captured using an eye-tracking application. Then, the eye-tracking videos were employed as stimuli to extract the participants’ reasons for not applying the comments. In addition, the participants’ first and revised texts underwent content analysis, and their feedback incorporation strategies were identified. The findings of this study indicated that the participants applied more than two-thirds of the comments; however, justified elaborated feedback was adopted more than elaborated and concise general feedback. The participants also applied justified elaborated feedback more accurately than the other feedback types. Finally, the results showed that four main feedback qualities (being too general, incomprehensible, inapplicable, and faulty) adversely affected L2 MA students’ feedback incorporation.