Designing ZPD-Based Writing Worksheets With Corrective Feedback: An Integrative Review for EFL Academic Writing

This study examines how written corrective feedback (WCF) can be operationalized within Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)-based writing worksheets to support EFL university students’ academic writing. A structured integrative review was conducted using a focused corpus of fourteen peer-reviewed studies on WCF, learner engagement, scaffolding, and technology-mediated feedback, supported by foundational and methodological literature. The review used eligibility screening, an analytic matrix, thematic coding, and narrative synthesis. The findings indicate that WCF is most educationally useful when it is focused, timely, interpretable, linked to revision, and responsive to learners’ demonstrated needs. The evidence also shows that feedback uptake depends on learners’ engagement and that digital tools can accelerate feedback cycles but cannot independently provide the contextual mediation required for complex academic writing. The synthesis yields a five-stage design framework: diagnostic baseline, guided planning, drafting with focused feedback, dialogic revision, and fading with transfer. The framework positions a worksheet as feedback infrastructure rather than as a static exercise sheet. Its contribution is a conceptually integrated model that specifies the form, timing, and gradual withdrawal of feedback for EFL academic writing; its effectiveness requires subsequent development and experimental testing.