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.