The Effects Of Teachers' Feedback On Non-English Major Students' Writing Improvement

English writing, as one of the four basic skills of language learning and inseparable aspect of communicative competence, has drawn more and more attention in the EFL research circles. Giving feedback is a crucial procedure in the process-oriented writing approach. The effects of different types of teacher feedback on students'writing have been examined by a substantial quantity of researchers. However, the researches concerning the effects of teacher feedback are scarce in China's EFL context.This research was designed grounded on relevant studies on teacher feedback home and abroad especially on the study of Bitchener et al.(2005). This study mainly concentrates on the effects of three types of teacher feedback, which differ in the focus of the feedback: a). form-focused feedback, b). content-focused feedback and c). form and content combined feedback. During this process, qualitative and quantitative measures are employed in order to: a). examine students'attitudes and preferences towards different types of teacher feedback; b). probe the effects that these types of feedback bring on students'writing performance; c). determine which type(s) of feedback is (are) more effective in improving students'writing.A longitudinal study over a semester is designed. The subjects include 42 non-English majors from Jilin HuaQiao Foreign Languages Institute. For the whole semester they attend an English writing course instructed by the same teacher and researcher. According to the questionnaire survey conducted at the very beginning of the semester, these 42 subjects are assigned to three experimental groups, and each group receives a different type of above-mentioned feedback. During the semester, every student finishes one piece of argumentation every week and rewrites it based on the teacher's feedback in the following week. At the end of the semester, every student has finished 17 pieces of compositions including rewritings. Data are collected from the form scores and the content scores of the second composition and the eighth composition. Nonparametric tests are performed in order to compare the scores. By the end of the research, a semi-structured interview is conducted to examine the consistency of the results of questionnaire and to probe the explanations for the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of different types of feedback.According to the quantitative and qualitative results, students expect to receive teacher feedback in the hope of making improvement on their writing. As for different types of teacher feedback, students with higher English proficiency level prefer the content-focused feedback, while those whose English capacity is weaker tend to choose the form-focused feedback. And the most popular type of feedback in the subjects is still the form and content combined feedback. Regarding the effects of different feedbacks, form-focused feedback is effective in improving writing form accuracy of the students and content-focused feedback fails to achieve significant improvement on the content quality of students'writing. And lastly, the form and content combined feedback appears to be the more effective type, since both form and content quality gains could be found in the group receiving this type of feedback.In light of these findings, it is worthwhile to apply teacher feedback to the revising process; and it is also advisable that teachers vary their choices on the types of feedback according to students'ability and preferences, and provide training on the interpretation of feedback to the students.