A Study Of Typical Writing Feedback In College English Writing Class

In recent years,many researches in China have documented that means of writing feedback is of great effectiveness in improving student writing.As for the feedback forms,there is a classification made by Keh who classified writing feedback as teacher written feedback,teacher-student conferencing feedback and peer feedback.Among many feedback studies,advocating on the combination of teacher feedback with peer feedback form,esp.with trained peer feedback has been on the stage of recent research in China,and many researchers have argued the advantages and the disadvantages of each feedback form.Based on their pedagogical implication, the author of this thesis attempts to find a better way in applying different forms of feedback in college English writing teaching,and to highlight the necessity of teacher-student group conference feedback while practicing teacher feedback and peer feedback.It is hoped that by adding teacher-student group conference feedback to teacher written feedback and peer feedback,students will get clearer of teacher's oral instruction and turn more interested in revision of their drafts,which is supposed to be helpful for students to make better performance in their English writings.The purpose of this research concerns:1) To find out college students' attitude toward types of feedback.2) To testify the effectiveness of the use of teacher-written feedback and peer feedback.3) To explore the advantages of adding teacher-student group conference feedback to the former teacher-student feedback.To gain the final goal of this research,the author chose one of her English classes involving 58 students for the experiment and started it from Sep.2nd,2008,the experiment lasted for 16 weeks.Questionnaire,interview,students' writing drafts and writing tests were used as instruments to collect data.The collected data was put into the computer and with means of SPSS 13.0,all the input data was analyzed ultimately.The result of the interview and questionnaire study indicated:Firstly,most students involved in the experiment expected the writing task to be an interactive activity;they had a deep need for feedback both from teachers and peers.Moreover, teacher written feedback,peer feedback and teacher-student group conference feedback all have certain positive impact on student writing.Thirdly,many of students experiencing teacher-student conference feedback thought they had a stronger desire for teacher-student conference feedback.Meanwhile,the data-based score analysis confirmed that:a) teacher written feedback and peer feedback form does help to improve students' writing proficiency to some extent,b) The attachment of teacher-students group conference feedback to teacher written feedback and peer feedback is a comparatively better means for writing feedback.