Linguistics Colloquium Series: Rethinking Corrective Feedback in L2 Academic Writing

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The Linguistics Department of Ohio University presents Dr. Ming Cheng discussing: "Death by Red Ink: Rethinking Corrective Feedback in L2 Academic Writing" in via Teams Join the meeting here

Abstract: Writing instructors spend countless hours marking up student drafts, and students spend roughly thirty seconds ignoring them. This talk asks whether there's a better way: screencast corrective feedback (SCF), where instructors record short videos walking students through their errors instead of scribbling in the margins. In a mixed-methods, counterbalanced study, 54 learners in an intensive English program received both screencast and written feedback on their writing, then revised immediately and rewrote a week later from memory. Across 1,887 coded errors, both feedback types worked fine when students had the feedback in front of them, but once it was gone, the screencast group retained far more, especially in grammar, vocabulary, and content. Written comments held their own only on surface fixes like spelling and punctuation. Students also simply liked the videos more, calling them personal, detailed, and motivating. The takeaway isn't to throw out the red pen, but to blend: save the screencasts for the hard stuff, keep written notes for the small stuff. We'll close with what this means for instructor workload and the new wave of AI-mediated feedback.

Dr. Ming Cheng is the General Education & Concurrent Instruction Coordinator and English/Communication faculty member at Arkansas State University Mid-South, where he also leads the college's AI task force. Dr. Cheng is also an alumnus of the Ohio University MA Applied Linguistics program