Abstract

Responding to learners’ writing is seen as highly time-consuming by many English as Second Language (ESL) writing teachers. Such feedback is however the most significant component contributing to improvement in second language writing. This paper gives an insight into the complexity in the teaching of second language writing especially in deciding on what would work best for their students to ensure improvement. There has been an array of heated debates in the literature arguing on the what would be the best techniques in providing teacher written feedback. The arguments revolve around many important issues, such as should the feedback be meaning-focused or form-focused and what would be the best way in providing the feedback. The study discussed in this paper thus explores the various techniques of teacher written feedback and look for ways on how to synthesize these various techniques. The synthesis was then applied in a second language writing classroom, adopting a process genre-based approach, for two months to investigate its usefulness and effectiveness. Sixty nine Engineering students, enrolled in a Technical and Professional Writing course in a higher learning institution took part in the study and had completed a set of questionnaire in gauging students’ perception on the synthesis applied. The paper concludes with a discussion on the pedagogical implications in the context of teaching writing to second language learners in Malaysia.