The Impact Of Teacher Feedback On Students' Revision In English Writing Teaching

In recent years, process-oriented approach attracts many English teachers and researchers' attention and become the most widely used approach in language teaching. In process-oriented approach, students are expected to write multiple drafts of their papers, feedback from teachers or peers on students writing is a dispensable part, and many researches are done to investigate feedbacks on various aspects. For example, whether feedback is helpful to students or not, how the teacher gives effective feedback, whether feedback can improve students' writing ability and so on. Researchers hope to find sound ways to help their students to make progress on their writings so they make great efforts and spend a large amount of time in correcting the papers and offering feedbacks to students.This study is to provide further insights into the field of teacher written feedback to seek the most effective way to offer feedback to students, and to examine how three types of teacher's comments (statements, imperatives and questions) affect students' motivation in revisions. To collect the data, an experiment and a questionnaire were conducted in turn in the study.121 studnets in Huihua Middle school joined in the experiment. They were required to write 6 compositions with three drafts. Then data were collected and analyzed using SPSS to examine whether different forms of teacher written feedback will have impact on students' revision. The study finds that teachers' comments have an apparent influence on students' revision, and the imperative form encourages students to make the most substantive and effective revision; most students pay great attention to the teacher's comments and they feel that teachers' feedback has helped them improve their writing skills; most subjects turn to their classmates, grammar book, dictionary or their English teacher for help when encountering difficulties in understanding the teacher's feedback and correcting their papers; students with less self-confidence in English learning claim themselves as fair learners and their writing skills as fair level.The results of the present study shed light on the feedback on students writing, though tentative, evidence from the study may provide some useful suggestions for English writing teaching. And it draws the teacher's attention to the importance of the communication between the students and the teachers.