An Experimental Study On The Effects Of Direct And Indirect Teacher Written Feedback On Senior High School Students’ Engagement With Feedback And English Writing Performance

Writing is an integral part of learning English in senior high school,and feedback is an important form of testing students’ learning outcome in writing and improving their writing skills.Depending on the provider of the feedback,feedback can take the form of teacher feedback or peer feedback.However,in Chinese English writing classrooms,written corrective feedback,mainly from the teacher,still dominates.In addition,according to the directness of feedback,direct feedback and indirect feedback are the most commonly used forms of feedback in teaching,so this study is also based on this classification.In recent years,research on student engagement with feedback has been increasing,providing a new perspective on the study of teacher written corrective feedback.Therefore,based on the multidimensional framework of learner engagement with feedback proposed by Ellis(2010)and Han & Hyland(2015),this study examines the effects of direct and indirect teacher written corrective feedback on senior high school students’ English writing performance and engagement with feedback from three dimensions: affective,behavioral and cognitive.The specific research questions are as follows.(1)Do direct and indirect teacher written feedback affect senior high school students’ engagement(affective,cognitive,and behavioral engagement)with feedback? If yes,what is the effect?(2)Do direct and indirect teacher written feedback affect senior high school students’ English writing performance? If yes,what is the effect?(3)Dose student engagement with feedback mediate the relationship between teacher written feedback and English writing performance?To answer the above research questions,reliable research data were collected from 97 senior high school students through questionnaires,writing tests,and interview,and the data were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively.All collected data were analyzed through SPSS 26.0,and the following research findings were drawn:(1)Both direct and indirect feedback had significant positive effects on students’ engagement with feedback,but indirect feedback had more significant positive effects on improving behavioral as well as cognitive engagement,and direct feedback had more significant positive effects on improving affective engagement.(2)Both direct and indirect feedback had significant positive effects on improving students’ English writing performance,and students in the direct feedback group performed better than those in the indirect feedback group.(3)Student engagement with feedback had a mediating effect between teacher written feedback and English writing performance,and it played a partially mediating role.Based on the above findings,this study provides practical suggestions for English writing teaching to help improve students’ engagement with feedback as well as their writing performance in the hope that it will be useful for English writing teaching and research.