Effects Of Teacher Feedback On Learners' Noticing In EFL Writing: The Case Of English Attributive Clauses

This dissertation is based on the 'noticing/triggering' function of Output Hypothesis proposed by Swain (1995). It makes a systematic analysis on effects of teacher feedback on learners' noticing in EFL writing. In particular, the present study investigates the extent of how different types of teacher feedback influence EFL learners' noticing at different proficiency levels in the case of English attributive clauses. 55 high-level and 57 low-level EFL Chinese students were involved in this experimental study to discover their performance in noticing of their errors in writing across four feedback conditions: (1) errors marked with codes from four different error categories ("codes" in short); (2) errors in the same four categories underlined but without marking or labeling ("no codes" in short); (3) errors of the four categories just commented at the end of the students' writings ("comments" in short); (4) no feedback at all ("no feedback" in short). One finding is that there was a significant difference between the 1^st output and the 2^nd output in both the high-level and the low-level group (except the "no feedback" subgroups). The other finding is that in the high-level group, the "codes" subgroup significantly outperformed the "no feedback" subgroup in the self-editing task but there were no significant differences among the "codes", the "no codes" and the "comments" subgroup; In the low-level group, both subgroups who received the "codes" and the "no codes" feedback condition significantly outperformed the "no feedback" subgroup, but there were also no significant differences among the "codes", the "no codes" and the "comments" subgroup. Another finding is that there were no significant differences in the effect of each type of teacher feedback across the high-level and the low-level group. The conclusion is that teacher feedback indeed can promote EFL Chinese learners' noticing in writing. As for the English attributive clauses, both high-level and low-level learners can be given any of the three types of teacher feedback. Furthermore, each type of feedback has the same effect on Chinese learners' noticing at different proficiency levels, in which the "codes", the "no codes" and the "comments" feedback have a positive impact and the "no feedback" condition has little impact on EFL Chinese learners' noticing. Some suggestions for future research were made and limitations of the present study were also discussed.