Engagement strategies and reasons for disengagement with teacher feedback: insights from L2 senior high school students in academic writing

Teacher feedback is a critical component in L2 academic writing classes. Despite extensive research on how feedback affects students’ writing and confidence, influences on how students engage with teacher comments remain unclear. The present study addresses this gap by exploring the engagement strategies of L2 senior high school students and the reasons for their disengagement. The results of the semi-structured interviews uncovered strategies for cognitive, affective, and behavioral engagement. Analyzing disengagement through the lens of L2 writing self-efficacy, low linguistic confidence and weak self-regulation were identified as contributing factors. These results suggest the need to embed feedback engagement strategies in academic writing instruction and to provide targeted interventions to address the lack of linguistic confidence and self-regulation among students with low L2 writing self-efficacy.