The Study Of Teacher Feedback In College English Writing

The study, guided on the process approach and formative assessment and based on the researches and discussions about the feedback to the students' writing, attempts to reveal the real situation of teacher written feedback in college. This thesis adopts a quantitative-qualitative research method. 35 college English teachers and 300 freshmen from Hu Nan University of Technology were involved in the questionnaires, and 5 teachers and 7 students were interviewed so as to reveal the current situation of teacher written feedback more objectively. The present study tries to answer the following three questions: Firstly, how do college English teachers respond to their students' compositions? Secondly, how do college students respond to teacher feedback to their writings? Thirdly, do the teacher feedback practices on students' compositions match students' expectations?On one hand, from the quantative perspective, a comparison was made of teachers' and students' responses to the questionnaire statistically by means of independent sample T-test with software SPSS 12.0. On the other hand, from the qualitative perspective, face-to-face interviews with teachers and students were implemented as supplemental instructions of questionnaires to make the study have better reliability and validity. The major findings of the study are:(1) Most teachers and students have positive attitudes towards teacher written feedback, and think it is very important to improve students' English writing.(2) There is a mismatch between the teacher feedback practices on students' compositions and students' expectations. For example, teachers pay a lot less attention to teacher written feedback than students; the way of pointing out errors the teachers like are different from the students, Teachers usually provide students the written comments which are not ideal for them, etc.(3) The reasons for the mismatch mainly lie in the lack of time and energy of college English teachers, as well as in the lack of communication between teachers and students.The present study aims at revealing the teacher written feedback in college English writing, and explores whether there is a match between teacher real practices on students' compositions and students' expectations. Based on the results of the investigation, the thesis makes an analysis of the main reasons and presents some corresponding solutions, and sheds light on later research of English writing feedback. Because of the constraints such as time and other factors, this study has its limitation and leaves some issues for further exploring in the hope of arousing the attention of teachers and students to teacher written feedback and improving the current practice of teacher feedback and students' writing ability.