A Study Of The Effect Of Self-monitoring On Non-English Majors' Writing

This thesis aims to investigate the use of self-monitoring technique in Chinese students' English writing and examine the influence on their revision. The technique of self-monitoring gives students control over the feedback they receive and enables teachers to produce effective feedback. The teacher responds in writing to students' annotations, thus giving direct and appropriate feedback on the points raised by the students. However, there is some potential problem in the technique: the students may choose to focus overwhelmingly on the form of the language, at the expense of the careful reviewing of the content and organization that makes compositions effective. To tackle the problem, a training course was applied. The study adopted an experimental research with a pre-test, three writing tasks, a post-test and interviews. The results of the study showed that students could be trained to use self-monitoring in writing. The use of the technique facilitates the teacher's understanding of the student-writer's problems and intentions, and allows the students more control over the feedback they receive. It is concluded that self-monitoring is especially effective for the students to improve the organization of their compositions.