Profiles of Writing Feedback Perception and Lexical Complexity Among Chinese University EFL Students: A Latent Profile Analysis and Retrodictive Qualitative Modeling Study

Abstract

Writing feedback perception (WFP) was important yet under studied in second language acquisition. This study proposed a WFP model including perceptions of teacher written feedback (TWF), peer feedback (PF), and automated written corrective feedback (AWCF), and two metrics of lexical complexity (LC), Uber index (UI) and Lambda values (LV). After collecting and analyzing survey data and writing products from 442 Chinese EFL students, using LPA, we identified three underlying profiles: students who self-reported higher scores of three WFPs and received higher scores of UI and LV, students who self-reported high scores of perceptions for TWF and AWCF and received medium UI and LV, and students who self-reported low scores of all three WFPs and received low scores of UI and LV. Further retrodictive qualitative modeling results proved that students in each profile agreed the LPA results and suggested a combination of three WFPs, mutual trust between AWCF and students, language proficiency levels were important reasons to lexical learning. Moreover, students in three profiles suggested different views regarding the directions of the influences between WFP and LC. Pedagogical implementations were provided.

Keywords: writing feedback perception, lexical complexity, Chinese university EFL students, latent profile analysis, retrodictive qualitative modeling