“I even feel annoyed and angry”: Teacher emotional experiences in giving feedback on student writing

Abstract

While feedback as an emotional business is increasingly acknowledged in second language writing, previous research has mainly examined students' emotional responses to teacher feedback. Teachers' emotional experiences in giving feedback remains largely unexplored. Informed by a sociocultural understanding of emotion, this study investigates the emotional experiences of teachers in giving feedback on students' writing. Drawing upon multiple types of data gathered from 27 EFL writing teachers in Chinese universities, the study reveals that giving feedback on students' writing is an emotionally-laden process mediated by not only the institutional factors, but also student (dis)engagement with teacher feedback and teachers' beliefs in the value of their feedback. While the participants who viewed feedback as a means to communicate with students did reap positive emotions from giving feedback, negative emotions including disappointment and anger turned out to be more prevalent among the participants who felt obliged to give comprehensive corrective feedback but without any perceived returns from their feedback-giving practice. With a detailed and situated account of teachers' emotional experiences about feedback-giving, this study concludes with several implications for L2 writing teachers and L2 writing education.