Effects Of Teachers' Error Feedbacks To Students Of Different Personalities On Developing Students' English Writing Ability

Few studies focus on the relation between students'personality factors and English learning (Hyland, 2005), and even fewer studies attach importance to personalities in the study of English writing. The main studies concerning personality are those of Guiora and the University of Michigan Personality and Language Behavior Research Group. Considering English learning, the basic question is: 'How will language affect personality development and how will personality development in turn affect language behavior?' (Spolsky, 2000: 110). In addition, since the 1960s, improving students' L2 abilities through EA (Error Analysis) gained wide recognition at home and abroad. In fact, the way to deal with learner errors has been debated for years in English teaching and learning. Thereafter, the present research intends to explore the influence of teachers' error feedbacks to students of different personalities on improving their English writing abilities. This research is both a qualitative and quantitative study.The present study aims to find out the answers to: (1) Do teachers' different error feedbacks influence extrovert students' attitudes toward English writing; (2) Do teachers' different error feedbacks influence introvert students' attitudes toward English writing; (3) Do these influences improve or hinder both extrovert students and introvert students' writing abilities; (4) Which mode or modes of error feedbacks help extrovert students or introvert students. The researcher uses two questionnaires, an interview and four-time writing practice. The data collected will be analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively, which enables the researcher to obtain the final results of the study.The main findings of the study are: (1) Teachers' error feedbacks do influence both extrovert and introvert students' attitudes toward English writing; (2) extrovert students are more interested in receiving direct error feedbacks while the introvert students are the opposite; (3) full correction is more helpful for extrovert students and indirect error feedbacks are more efficient for introvert students.It is expected that the findings will sensitize the teachers to lay emphasis on giving error feedbacks to their students' L2 writing by considering their different personalities so as to lessen student writers' anxiety, rebuild their self-confidence and positive attitudes to English writing, which will finally improve their writing abilities. In addition, this study may help English writing teachers to realize the error feedback methods should be different to students of different personalities.