Chapter One Introduction

1.1 Background of the study

Writing is a quite powerful tool. Although some people are kept away from each otherby both distance and time, they can also communicate with each other by writing. Basing onwriting, we may explore. On a topic we can use it to probe, organize and refine our ownpoint of views, thus, writing is an estimable learning method. In terms of self-expression,writing is a beneficial tool. We can create as we can imagine by writing, through a specificpoint of view, we can also persuade others by writing. Writing can be fully used to expressone’s ideas which even contains what we think and who we are. Writing is used to writedown our own experiences and reflect on our own sophisticated understanding and truefeelings.However, writing has been neglected for a very long time not only in English teachingbut also in English testing. In most of the colleges, writing only serves as a complementarypart to intensive reading. Though students might have gained plenty of language inputthrough reading, they find it so difficult to communicate with others either in written or inspoken language. That is because they lack enough opportunities to output what they haveinput.On the one hand, in most of the present English tests, writing takes such a small portionof the whole test that most students seldom make full preparation for it. They explain that forone thing writing is such a demanding and time-consuming job for them.

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1.2 Significance of the study

It is commonly recognized by the majority of Chinese teachers who teach English,and is also recognized by some Chinese researchers, which English writing for Chinesestudents is far from satisfaction, especially for English writing correction. To a certainextent, it is time-consuming and labor-intensive items but seems in vain. In terms ofmaking much improvement on students’ writing, methods of feedback are proved to begreatly effective in plenty of studies. All those are from writing instruction research. Sometypes of feedback including “form feedback”, “content feedback” can mostly be found inChinese Master academic thesis.For the sake of confirming and further developing the findings which are gained byother researchers, the author of this thesis carries out the research concerning formfeedback and content feedback. The empirical research investigates the effectiveness,acceptance and feasibility of form feedback and content feedback. The aim is to helpChinese English teachers to learn more about how to correct English writing with the helpof form feedback and content feedback which can highly improve the students’ writingaccuracy and fluency.

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Chapter Two Literature Review

2.1 The definition of feedback

Wiliam once claimed that the term ‘feedback’ has its origins in the theory ofengineering systems, and was originally used to describe a feature of a system that allowsinformation regarding some aspect of the output of a system to be ‘feedback’ to the input inorder to influence future outputs.According to Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics(Richard, et al. 2000), feedback refers to “any comments or information received by thelearners from their teacher or other learners”. For instance, “any verbal or facial signalsgiven by the listeners to show that they have understood what the speaker said”. In Englishwriting teaching, it refers to any comments or information given to the writers either by theirteacher or by other learners in terms of a writing task.Feedback has become a very important part in second language writing teaching sincethe introduction of the process writing theory into this field in the 1960s and 1970s.Feedback is defined in writing teaching as “authoritative information students receive whichhelps enhance or adjust response to instruction and enables students to be more efficient toachieve the aims of the course”. Lalande (1982) further defines feedback as “any procedureused to inform a learner where an instrumental response is right or wrong” in EFL situation.

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2.2 Teacher feedback

The teacher feedback is regarded as the information that teacher offer to students, theinformation generally involve in the forms of written or oral, which let the students knownthe statue of their learning process. The more specific, regular and profound the feedback,the better.Traditionally, only teachers are believed to have the right to read, comment on and gradestudents’ papers. Teachers regarded as readers are supposed to provide how the students (thewriter) react, in order to help the students (the writer) to improve their grade, and to justifythe grade that the teachers have been given (Hyland, 2003; cited in Wang Ying, 2007).Providing feedback is often seen as one of the most essential tasks of writing teachers whoteach English as a foreign language.Teachers act as many eight major roles as the common reader, the copy editor, theproofreader, the reviewer, the gatekeeper, the critic, the linguist, and the diagnostician. An experienced teacher may be a combination of all the roles or one role only at one timeaccording to different situation and the needs of the writer.Several areas of feedback are pointed out on writing in a review of the literature. namely,teachers’ comments as feedback, conferences as feedback, peer feedback, self-monitoringlearning, taped commentary, and minimal marking (Keh, 1990; Charles, 1990; Hyland,1998). The first kind of feedback: teachers’ comments as feedback are primarily focused inthis thesis.

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Chapter Three Research Methodology ......... 16

3.1 Research questions ............ 16

3.2 Participants ............ 16

3.3 Instruments ............ 17

3.4 Research procedures.......... 19

3.5 Data Collection............ 21

Chapter Four Data Analysis and Discussion ...... 22

4.1 Analysis and discussion of test............ 22

4.2 Results and analysis of questions in questionnaire...... 30

Chapter Five Conclusion ........ 36

5.1 Major Findings of the Study.......... 36

5.2 Implications ........... 37

5.3 Limitations of Present Study ......... 38

Chapter Four Data Analysis and Discussion

So as to answer the two research questions which have been discussed in the thirdchapter, the results of data collection and analysis are shown in this chapter. In the firstsection, at the beginning of the research, in order to further explain whether there are obviousdifferences between the Group 1 and Group 2, the first draft before revision is used as thepre-test. And then each group’s Draft1 and Draft 4 are compared to testify whether there issignificant difference by researcher. Both Draft 1 and Draft 4 are original draft, not therevised rewrites. In the second section, it presents the second research question, and offersthe questionnaire’s results to reveal students’ perceptions. The former chapter hasrepresented details about how the research was conducted. This chapter analyzes anddiscusses the results. The data used in this chapter comes from the questionnaire, pre-testand post-test. SPSS is used to analyze the statistics.

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Conclusion

According to the above quantitative and qualitative analysis, in the process of probingthe two questions, we get many major findings. This research’s main findings and theperceptivity into the value of form and content feedback in students’ English writing are asfollows:

1. In this study, the data collection reveals that during most students’ adapting theircompositions, fewer errors are made, when teacher points out grammar errors and makesbroad comments on those errors appeared in students’ compositions. The form feedback isnecessary, but on the whole it is not sufficient to improve students’ writing. With the formfeedback, students make significant progress in writing accuracy. But students don’t havemuch improvement in writing fluency.

2. All of organization, discourse structure, association and cohesion, and givingsuggesting revisions are focused by content feedback. Content feedback helps improve thecontent part of composition rewrites. Students have significant improvement in fluency notin accuracy. This shows that the students’ writing fluency is significantly improved with thecontent feedback.

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Reference (omitted)