Written Corrective Feedback On Junior High English Writing

Studies have shown that teachers’ internal beliefs could influence their behaviors,but the relationship between the two is not simply a one-one correspondence.Writing is one of the important English skills that students should master.Teachers’ written corrective feedback(CF)can help students to improve their writing skills.The extent,focus and type of teacher feedback will all influence students’ learning effects.Based on Noticing Hypothesis and Interaction Hypothesis,this research selects all English teachers(totally 18)of a junior high school in Chengdu as the research objects,to investigate the teachers’ written CF beliefs and practices,any difference between the two and possible reasons.The research instruments are teacher questionnaire,semi-structured interview,and students’ compositions with teachers’ written CF.Teacher questionnaire and the interview are used to understand teachers’ written CF beliefs,and students’ compositions are used to investigate the actual practices of teachers’ providing written CF.Microsoft Excel 2019 and SPSS 19 are employed to do data analysis in this research.The results of the research show:(1)100% of teachers believe that it is necessary to provide students with written CF with the aim of helping students analyze the cause of errors,learn to correct them and avoid making similar mistakes again.As for the extent of feedback,only 16.67% of teachers tend to provide selective feedback,which means they may just mark some types of students’ errors.As for the focus of feedback,77.78% of teachers show that they will emphasize students’ grammatical errors.As for the types of feedback,55.56% of them tend to provide direct feedback.(2)In the actual process of providing feedback,all the 18 teachers choose to provide comprehensive feedback.At the same time,88.89% of teachers pay attention to students’ grammatical errors.In addition,77.78% of teachers use direct feedback.(3)By comparing teachers’ written CF beliefs and practices,it is found that 61.11% of teachers show significant discrepancy on the types of written CF.33.33% of teachers show obvious inconsistency on the focus of written CF and 16.67% of teachers show some differences on the extent of providing feedback.The results of this study are consistent with those of Ferris’(2006)and Lee’s(2008),but there are some differences in the focus and types of feedback.The reason is related to the lack of theoretical knowledge of teachers in English writing teaching and written CF,and it is also connected with the stereotype of “responsible teachers” in Chinese culture.Some advice is put forward with the purpose of improving the gap between teachers’ beliefs and practices of providing feedback: Encouraging teachers to study the theories about the teaching of writing and written CF,and regularly organizing research conferences on how to provide written CF.