Imperatives or “I’d like” statements: Suggestions in instructors’ written feedback for ESL student writers

Abstract

Little research has been conducted to investigate highly advanced ESL learners’ written production of
suggestions when addressing interlocutors of lower social power. The present study fills this gap by examining
non-native speaking (NNS) composition instructors’ pragmatic choices of suggestions as compared to those
made by their native speaking (NS) counterparts when providing written feedback to international
undergraduate students on their first draft of an academic paper at an American university. Both groups offered
more direct than indirect suggestions, and the highly advanced NNS instructors had a higher percentage of
indirect suggestions than their NS counterparts. The two groups favored different syntactic structures for
making suggestions: “I would like” structures for the NS group and imperatives for the NNS group. This study
has practical implications for the training of International Teaching Assistants (ITAs) and non-native speaking
faculty members who are novice composition instructors.