The Effects Of Different Teacher Feedback Types On EFL Writing

Many researchers have carried out extensive research on the effectiveness of teacher feedback in learners'English writing. However, no conclusive answers were given. With the purpose of obtaining more information of teacher feedback, the present study was designed on the basis of the relevant studies, especially the study (Bitchener, Young,& Cameron,2005) to investigate the effects of teacher feedback on the grammatical accuracy of articles and subject-verb agreement in writing.The research aimed to answer the three questions listed as follows:(1) Does teacher feedback have significant effects on improving the participants'accuracy on condition that the two target error categories are treated separately? (2) Among the three types of teacher feedback adopted in the present study, which performs most effectively in improving the participants' accuracy of the two target error categories? (3) Do the three types of teacher feedback produce durative effects on improving the participants'accuracy of the two target error categories? 96 participants involved in the study were first-year English majors in Education Institute of Lanzhou. One parallel group was randomly selected as a control group, and the three other experimental groups were direct feedback group, direct feedback plus teacher-student conference feedback group and indirect feedback group respectively. The experiment lasted 16 weeks, adopting different writing materials from CET-4, but carrying out the same procedure. In terms of the specific procedure of the main body of the experiment, the researcher asked all the participants to write a different composition every other week. For example, the researcher asked all the participants to write a composition within 25 minutes in class in the first week. Afterwards, their compositions were collected by the teacher, and the feedback was provided by the researcher. A week later, i.e., in the second week, the compositions were returned to the participants, who were required to read carefully and correct the errors within the given in-class 10 minutes, after which, all the revised compositions were immediately collected by the teacher again. The participants started to write a new composition in 25 minutes in class in the third week. The research was conducted in the combination of quantitative and qualitative methods. That is to say, the data in the pretest, the posttest, the delayed-posttest and the interview were collected and analyzed with the assistance of SPSS 11.5.The principal findings of the present study are listed as follows:(1) Teacher feedback had significant effects on improving the accuracy of both the target error categories in the participants' writing; (2) Direct feedback plus teacher-student conference feedback performed most effectively in improving the participants' accuracy of both the target error categories; (3) None of the three types of teacher feedback produced durative effects on improving the participants'accuracy of either articles or subject-verb agreement.The present study not only enriched our knowledge of teacher feedback but also provided a better understanding of feedback, by means of the investigation of the combination of direct feedback and teacher-student conference feedback. Moreover, the emphasis on teacher-student interaction provided positive implications, which might improve students' English writing proficiency. Many researchers have carried out extensive research on the effectiveness of teacher feedback in learners' English writing. However, no conclusive answers were given. With the purpose of obtaining more information of teacher feedback, the present study was designed on the basis of the relevant studies, especially the study (Bitchener, Young,& Cameron,2005) to investigate the effects of teacher feedback on the grammatical accuracy of articles and subject-verb agreement in writing.The research aimed to answer the three questions listed as follows:(1) Does teacher feedback have significant effects on improving the participants'accuracy on condition that the two target error categories are treated separately? (2) Among the three types of teacher feedback adopted in the present study, which performs most effectively in improving the participants'accuracy of the two target error categories? (3) Do the three types of teacher feedback produce durative effects on improving the participants' accuracy of the two target error categories?96 participants involved in the study were first-year English majors in Education Institute of Lanzhou. One parallel group was randomly selected as a control group, and the three other experimental groups were direct feedback group, direct feedback plus teacher-student conference feedback group and indirect feedback group respectively. The experiment lasted 16 weeks, adopting different writing materials from CET-4, but carrying out the same procedure. In terms of the specific procedure of the main body of the experiment, the researcher asked all the participants to write a different composition every other week. For example, the researcher asked all the participants to write a composition within 25 minutes in class in the first week. Afterwards, their compositions were collected by the teacher, and the feedback was provided by the researcher. A week later, i.e., in the second week, the compositions were returned to the participants, who were required to read carefully and correct the errors within the given in-class 10 minutes, after which, all the revised compositions were immediately collected by the teacher again. The participants started to write a new composition in 25 minutes in class in the third week. The research was conducted in the combination of quantitative and qualitative methods. That is to say, the data in the pretest, the posttest, the delayed-posttest and the interview were collected and analyzed with the assistance of SPSS 11.5.The principal findings of the present study are listed as follows:(1) Teacher feedback had significant effects on improving the accuracy of both the target error categories in the participants' writing; (2) Direct feedback plus teacher-student conference feedback performs most effectively in improving the participants'accuracy of both the target error categories; (3) None of the three types of teacher feedback produced durative effects on improving the participants' accuracy of either articles or subject-verb agreement.The present study not only enriched our knowledge of teacher feedback but also provided a better understanding of feedback, by means of the investigation of the combination of direct feedback and teacher-student conference feedback. Moreover, the emphasis on the teacher-student interaction provided positive implications, which might improve students' English writing proficiency.