The impact of formative feedback strategies on EFL Afghan students’ writing skills

The present study investigates the effect of formative feedback strategies on EFL Afghan students writing skills. The purpose of this study is to explore some formative feedback strategies which are used by Afghan university instructors. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews with four university instructors of the English Department of Language and Literature faculty at Herat University, Afghanistan. The results show positive attitudes of instructors toward using formative feedback in EFL writing courses. The finding uncovered that formative feedback strategies (constructive written feedback, online feedback, peer feedback) are widely used in the EFL writing courses through which students can improve their writing skills by recognizing their mistakes and revising their written assignments. The data also indicate that although peer feedback is a very useful strategy of formative feedback in the improvement of the writing skills, still, Afghan students cannot trust their peers feedback. Some implications for instructors were discussed for better implementation of formative feedback strategies.