An Empirical Study On Exploring An Effective Approach Of Feedback In College English Writing

Feedback has become an essential component in second or foreign language writing teaching and learning since process writing was introduced into the field of second or foreign language writing in the 1960s and 1970s. And it plays a great important role in improving the second or foreign language writing skills. A great deal of empirical research concerning teacher written feedback and peer feedback as well as teacher-student conference feedback has been conducted in the foreign context, while in China, studies in this field are relatively rare. What's more, few attempts are found to specially explore the combination of the three writing feedbacks, i.e. peer feedback, teacher-student conference feedback and teacher commentary feedback in college English writing. Therefore, the thesis aims to examine whether and how the combination of peer feedback and teacher feedback as an organic whole affects college students'writing performance as well as to explore whether different writing feedbacks bring about different influences so as to find out an effective approach of feedback in college English writing.Two intact classes of freshmen (N=86) at intermediate level are involved in the present study. They are chosen from two different majors in Shenyang Normal University instructed by the author of the thesis. A pre-test is carried out to ensure that the two classes are at the same level of writing. Instruments for data collection include pre-test,2 writing tasks, post-test, questionnaire and interview. In the empirical treatments, EC conducts peer feedback—teacher-student conference feedback—teacher commentary feedback, whereas CC carries out traditional teacher written feedback—traditional teacher written feedbacks—traditional teacher written feedbacks.The following three questions are proposed in this study:1) What are the effects of two different feedback approaches (combination of peer feedback, teacher-student conference feedback and teacher commentary feedback vs. traditional written feedback) in non-English major college students'writing? 2) Are there any significant differences in promoting non-English major college students making revisions in their subsequent writing after they have received different kinds of feedback? 3) What are the non-English major college students' attitudes towards peer feedback, teacher-student conference feedback and traditional written feedback?The present study comes to the following conclusions:1) Both students in EC and CC make statistically significant improvement in their writing over the course of semester after receiving empirical treatment; 2) Students in EC make statistically significant improvement in their writing after receiving the combination of different feedbacks (peer feedback, teacher-student conference feedback, and teacher commentary feedback) than that of students in CC who just receive traditional teacher written feedback; 3) Concerning the revision of writing drafts, the empirical treatment in EC can promote more revision in students'writing from the holistic perspective:contents and organization; 4) Most Students'response to teacher feedback and peer feedback in writing in both EC and CC is affirmative and they especially prefer teacher-student conference feedback; 5) A large number of students hold the view that they make some progress; most of students share the idea that the feedback on contents and organization is most useful; they make the biggest improvement on contents and organization.