A Comparative Study Of The Effects Of Teacher’s Oral And Written Feedback On The Writing By Non-English Majors

With the introduction of process writing approach and error analysis, feedback hasbecome an indispensible part in the process of English writing. A large number of studies andresearch have been done on the most commonly used feedback—teacher feedback. As thetraditional teacher written feedback is the only form of communication between teacher andstudents, less attention was given to teacher-students conferencing (teacher oral feedback).And few studies are on this mode of teacher feedback and its relationship with teacher writtenfeedback. Therefore, this thesis aims at exploring the effects of teacher oral feedback andcomparing its effectiveness with that of the written feedback.Three research questions are proposed in this study:1. What are students’ attitudes towards teacher oral feedback and written feedback inEnglish writing?2. How do teacher oral feedback and written feedback affect students’ writing and errorcorrection?3. In what aspects is teacher oral feedback advantageous in helping students correct theirerrors?60non-English major freshmen of in two classes in a chemical university where theauthor works are chosen as study subjects. A pre-test is carried out to make sure that students’writing abilities of the two classes are at the same level. The instruments of test, questionnaireand interview are used in the study. Multi-drafts writing in process approach is used in thefour writing tasks. Students in both the experimental class and control class need to makerevisions to their writing according to the teacher’s feedback. Two modes of feedback areused in the experimental class and control class respectively. Students of the experimentalclass receive teacher’s oral feedback whereas students of the control class receive teacher’swritten feedback. At last, a post-test is given to testify the effects of corrective feedback, andthen data are collected to make a comparison of the effectiveness of the two modes offeedback.After analyzing the data obtained from the test, questionnaire and interview, conclusionsare drawn as follows:1. Students have a positive attitude towards teacher feedback and they prefer teacher oralfeedback to written feedback.2. Students in the experimental class who received oral feedback show moreimprovement in their writing than students in the control class who receive written feedback.The students in the experimental class showed a higher rate of reduction in the number oferrors than the students in the control class.3. Teacher oral feedback shows its advantage in reducing topical and relational errors.This thesis is composed of five chapters. Chapter One is a brief introduction of thecurrent situation of college English writing and the purpose of the study. Chapter Twoprovides a comprehensive theoretical background by reviewing the main theories and researchin the field of foreign language writing teaching, particularly concerning error analysis and feedback. Research methodology is presented in Chapter Three. The questionnaire adopts themodel of Wang Ying (2007) and Lee (2004) as a source of reference. The tests are composedof one pre-test and one post-test. Data analysis and discussions are dealt with in Chapter Four.Chapter Five summarizes the main finding of the study and provides some pedagogicalimplications for English writing teaching and learning practice. It also gives some tentativerecommendations for future research based on the findings of the present study.