Teacher Written Feedback And Student Feedback-on-feedback: Two Case Studies

In second language writing classes, it is an established practice of giving feedback on student errors. When feedback is provided, the key consideration is what makes feedback effective. As it is known, teacher written feedback is both a time-consuming and labor-intensive activity. At the same time, real-life teachers always know that responding effectively to students'problems in their writing is a challenging endeavor fraught with uncertainty about its long-term effectiveness (Ferris, 1999). Correspondingly, the efficacy of feedback is one of the major controversies in the field of second language writing.Since the 1990s', the research on teacher feedback and student feedback-on-feedback has been unfolding abroad, especially empirical studies to investigate the research questions proposed by Prof. Dana Ferris (1995a,b; 1997a,b; 1999), while in China the research on this issue is a relatively neglected area. Most of the research articles are presented in the form of literature review, and empirical studies with controlled experimental design and precise statistical method are rare. As a result, there are fewer voices to question the efficacy of providing feedback. Correspondingly, without a sound theoretical guide, most of the English teachers in China provide feedback according to their experiences or personal beliefs.Since students are very concerned about language accuracy and attach great importance to teacher feedback, and providing feedback consumes huge amounts of time and energy, it is of great significance to undertake more research on this topic to the teaching and learning of second language writing. The purpose of this dissertation is that it can go a long way towards identifying teachers'and students'traditionally experienced problems in the feedback process, help teachers make their feedback more effective, and render the feedback process a more positive and valuable overall experience to students, and at the same time, a more rewarding experience to teachers.This dissertation employs the case study methodology to examine the written feedback practice of one Chinese teacher and one foreign teacher to their EFL students in the two classrooms at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Descriptive data from textual analysis of teacher feedback are triangulated with student data from questionnaires and interviews and teacher data from interviews.In this dissertation, the linguistic features of the two teachers'comments are first examined. Then the impact of feedback with different characteristics on students is investigated. Following is the investigation on the focus and error feedback strategies of teacher practice and student needs. Also the research focus of this dissertation is to inquire into the student feedback-on-feedback, including how they engage with the feedback, their reactions and attitudes towards the received feedback and their preferences for and expectations of the future feedback by relating them to actual teacher written feedback.Findings show that there exist some problems in the traditional single-draft setting. In terms of formal characteristics of feedback, the foreign teacher's feedback is more text-specific and indirect in nature, with more hedges involved. With regard to the focus, the Chinese teacher's feedback is more form-focused and the foreign teacher's feedback more content-focused. When considering the error feedback strategies, both the teachers practice direct feedback and comprehensive feedback rather than indirect feedback and selective feedback. The investigations on student feedback-on-feedback reveal that what students want are those teacher comments which cover language form, content and structure, and they prefer text-specific, comprehensive and direct error feedback with specific revision strategies. Both teachers and students regard the feedback as an effective practice of facilitating the students'improvement of writing proficiency in the long run.The findings of this study suggest that the process-oriented approach and multi-drafts should be more widely incorporated into EFL writing classes. Teachers should be aware of the influence of every aspect of their feedback practice on student attitudes and expectations. Since it is not manageable to approach each student as an individual, the basic solution is to empower students and let them make self-directed decisions when teachers are providing feedback. Communications and negotiations with students should be established to make teacher feedback and student feedback-on-feedback a genuine communicative experience.