A Study Of Conference Use In The Teaching Of EFL Writing

As a form of feedback, conference is believed to be effective in eliminating students’ misunderstandings and confusion, encouraging greater student participation, fostering a more equal and closer teacher-student relationship, and offering individualized instruction. Despite its merits, a limited number of studies have investigated the issue of conference in the teaching of EFL writing. This study, therefore, attempts to investigate the role of conference in developing Chinese EFL students’ writing abilities. Focus will be on students’expectations and perceptions, the effects of conference on improving student’s writing and effective conferencing strategies.Five low-achieving EFL students participated in the multi-case study. They were asked to share their expectations and perceptions, write and revise two argumentative compositions and two expository compositions and attend conferences. By analyzing the data collected through questionnaires, interviews, written texts and conference audiotapes, this study has found that Chinese EFL students held a positive attitude towards conference, and regarded it as a clear and helpful means to improve their writings and foster a closer relationship with the instructor. It is also found that conferencing instructions have more obvious and lasting effects on writing organization than on content and idea development, and that the effects on the acquisition of grammar and vocabulary were specific, immediate, yet with short retentions. In addition, three kinds of conferencing strategies were found effective in helping students incorporating information from the conference into their written texts, namely, using directives, using information-seeking acts and opinion-expressing acts.Based on the discussion of the above results and findings, the present study concludes that conference is not only beneficial and helpful, but also brings real improvements in students’ writings. By implications, conference should be highly recommended as a useful tool to improve EFL students’writing abilities. For conferencing instructions, it is important to cover both global and local issues of students’ writings and employ a variety of strategies to initiate negotiation with students and extend the retentions of instruction.