Exploring Chinese university English writing teachers’ emotions in providing feedback on student writing

Abstract

Despite the growing interest in emotions in L2 writing education, empirical research on teachers’ emotions as feedback providers is limited. With 288 English writing teachers from 120 universities in 23 provinces of China, this study developed a 17-item scale to measure Chinese university English writing teachers’ feedback-giving emotions. Exploratory factor analysis revealed five kinds of emotions: cheerfulness, contentment, frustration, anxiety, and anger. Latent profile analysis identified four groups of teachers according to their diverse patterns of emotions: slight-positive-emotional teachers (N = 118, 40.97 % of the total sample), negative-emotional teachers (N = 35, 12.15 %), positive-emotional teachers (N = 50, 17.36 %), and mixed-emotional teachers (N = 85, 29.51 %). Most demographic variables, including teaching experience, student background, and institution prestige, had no correlation with teachers’ feedback-giving emotions. Only professional training experience had minimal influence on teachers’ group memberships concerning feedback-giving emotions. This study contributes to the literature on teachers’ emotions during the provision of feedback by developing an instrument for large-scale quantitative studies. It also confirms the complexity of feedback-giving emotions, particularly the identification of mixed-emotional teachers.