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ABSTRACT
This study examined potential relationships between instructors' backgrounds and giving feedback on students' writings in the Bangladeshi EFL context. Forty-six second language (L2) writing instructors from different universities participated in this study. Participants completed questionnaires detailing their education, experience, and views about styles and strategies to give feedback on students' writings. The findings indicated that older instructors were more likely to have a background in literature studies, whereas younger instructors have qualifications in language-based areas. However, despite the difference in instructors' backgrounds, the data suggest little difference the in ways they went about feedback practices. A potential reason for this is that those in leadership positions in the English departments may still retain the literature perspective of teaching L2 writing, including feedback practices, so younger instructors think that they need to follow their leaders' focus. This implies that as younger instructors take on leadership roles in their institutions, modifications in principles of such practices would emerge. The data, nonetheless, demonstrated some discrepancies in instructors' perceptions and principles of giving feedback.
Keywords: Feedback, L2 writing, writing instructors, views about L2 writing
INTRODUCTION
The Indian subcontinent occupies a peculiar position with regard to its relationship with English. The language is hardly considered or consumed for its apparent intellectual and socio-economic benefits, in that it evokes a history of colonization by the British that lasted for almost two hundred years, 1757-1947. English appeared politically more critical and controversial when Lord Macaulay proposed his "Minute on Indian Education" in 1835 to valorize English over Sanskrit, Arabic, and other vernaculars to educate a "comparatively ignorant" (Macaulay and Young, 1979, p. 353) nation so as to "form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern" (Macaulay and Young, 1979, p. 359). Although Macaulay proposed to challenge and change the whole paradigm of education of the Indian subcontinent, his proposal presupposed an uninterrupted circulation of British literature because of its intrinsic superiority compared to Sanskrit and Arabic. These two traditional lineaments of English studies-that English is politically encumbered, and that English studies means the study of British literature-prevail across the Indian subcontinent. Bangladesh is no exception with this regard.
One of the oldest universities in the Indian subcontinent, for example, is the University of...