A Study On The Effectiveness Of Teacher Written Corrective Feedback In Non-English Major Students' Writing In China

During various researches on English writing, feedback often appears as an important factor since the process approach was introduced between 1960s and 1970s. For Chinese students who are learning English in EFL environment, the feedback is seemingly playing a vital role in the English teaching. So far many scholars have conducted experimental study on the efficacy of different feedbacks on ESL writing, such as directive feedback VS indirective feedback, content feedback VS form feedback, etc. While the experimental study domestic about the corrective feedback was relatively rare, and also there is no consistent conclusion about the efficacy of the feedback. Truscott(1996) argued that, corrective feedback was no good to students' writing, but harmful. While Ferris and Roberts(2001) have proved that the accuracy of the students who had received the feedback was much better than that of the students who had not. This thesis attempts to study students' attitudes and perceptions towards corrective feedback as well as examining the impact of corrective feedback, and through the analysis of the result to explore corrective feedbacks on each type of errors. So that to give some suggestions on how to provide feedback effectively.Three kinds of feedbacks are applied in this study, which come from Rod Ellis'(2009) typology:directive, indirective and metalinguistic feedback. This study examines 59 freshmen from Beijing Language and Culture University (BLCU) in accounting major, with each have average 6 years experience of English learning by conducting questionnaire, writing task and interview.59 students from three classes are divided into three groups according to their natural class with each group receive different feedback. With statistical analysis on variance, the results indicate that:1) Most students hold positive attitudes to teachers'feedback and would review their drafts carefully. They would like their teachers to locate the errors but do not provide correct form. It would be better for them if some grammatical descriptions will be provided.2) All the three feedbacks played an important role on students'writing and students'growth on overall quality between first draft and final draft is significant.3) all the three feedbacks could significantly reduce students'formal errors and meaning-preserving errors, while the mean difference of the number of errors between two drafts showed directive feedback is relatively more effective. Only metalinguistic feedback which group 3 received could significantly reduce microstructure errors. Combined with the result of the interview with 15 students, the study also found students within the same group even hold different views on the same feedback.Although there are some limitations in the present research, its findings have some implications for the English teaching and future studying. There is no single best feedback when we strive to provide students the most effective information. A combination of different feedback to students with different level on different aspects is very necessary. Also it is suggested that how to receive feedback effectively be included in a kind of training just as strategies training. In this way students could respond more effectively to teachers'comments and have a better understanding thus improve their writing quality.