Exploring Affective Engagement with Automated and Peer Feedback in L2 Writing: Evidence from Chinese Undergraduates

Feedback is increasingly perceived as an interactive process instead of a one-way transmission of information. In this context, affective engagement, or how students respond emotionally to feedback, has become a critical factor shaping the effectiveness of feedback. While automated writing evaluation (AWE) feedback and peer feedback are widely used in university English writing classrooms, limited research has examined students’ emotional experiences and attitudinal responses across different feedback types. Using a qualitative case study design, this study investigates the affective engagement of four undergraduate English majors completing a writing task involving AWE feedback and peer feedback in a Chinese university writing course. Drawing on students’ drafts, feedback comments, reflective journals, and retrospective interview data, this study explores students’ emotional experiences and attitudinal stances toward both types of feedback. The findings indicate that AWE feedback elicits a combination of trust and mild anxiety, whereas peer feedback generates greater emotional variability. Learner beliefs, as well as feedback accuracy and features, significantly shape students’ affective engagement. The findings highlight affective engagement as a key psychological mechanism in feedback processing and suggest that effective feedback practices should attend not only to informational quality but also to learners’ emotional responses.