The Impact Of Teacher's Comment Types On College Non-English Majors' Writing Revision

Writing, as one of the most important skills that language learners need to learn, is critical in foreign language teaching and giving feedback to learners on their writing drafts is among the most controversial topics. As for non-English majors studying in EFL (English as foreign language) context in China, teacher's comments are the indispensible part of language input, which have been a vital element in writing instruction since the process approach was introduced in the last 1960s and 1970s. To date, many researchers have focused on this topic and lots of research related to this topic has been done at home and abroad.A number of experimental studies demonstrate that different types of teachers'comments may influence students'writing quality differently, so it is important to explore how different comment types impact students' writing quality so as to improve students'writing ability. In the previous studies, the differences of individuals' writing levels have seldom been taken into consideration, thus the purpose of this thesis is to explore the impact of three different types of teacher's comments on Chinese college non-English majors'writing revision in order to find out the proper type of teacher's comments for students at different writing levels. The specific research questions addressed in this paper are as follows:1) How effective are three types of teacher' comments on writing revisions for students at different writing levels? 2) Could teacher's comments reduce numbers of errors that the subjects have made in their following writing drafts?Based on the process writing approach, output hypothesis, feedback and noticing theory, and interaction hypothesis, the present study chose nine college students of Chinese native speakers majoring in secretarial science in Xi'an Institute of Finance and Economics. They were freshmen in the second semester. Two questionnaires, a writing experiment for five rounds and an interview were conducted in the research. The first questionnaire was used to gather the background information of the subjects in order to select the proper experimental subjects. The second one was designed to get an overview of the subjects'attitude towards teacher's comments. According to the information in the first questionnaire and the scores of the composition in mid-term test, final test, and three times of small tests in the classroom, the subjects were divided into three groups:students at high level, students at average level and students at low level. Each group included three students of approximately the same writing level. And within each group, the three subjects were given statements, questions and imperatives respectively to comment on their writing drafts. The subjects involved were instructed to write a composition in 40 minutes around 150 words in class. The topics for the writing experiments were selected from their textbook and were determined after consulting two experienced instructors to reach the goal of the present research. The researcher collected the subjects' preliminary drafts and comments on them. And the writings with teacher's comments were checked by the other two teachers with rich experiences in teaching English. In the following week, the writing drafts with teacher's comments were returned to the subjects. The subjects were required to revise their writing drafts with reference to the researcher's comments and then hand in their revisions together with the preliminary drafts the next day. The researcher analyzed the changes on the subjects'revisions to study the impact of different types of teacher's comments on the revision for the subjects at different writing levels. The subjects' revision was divided into no change, change with positive effect, change with negative effect, and deletion. For the reliability of the research, the similar writing experiment was conducted for five times in one semester. And for the purpose of the present study, the writing drafts for the second time, the third time and the last time were chosen to be analyzed. The results of the present research were:1) for the subjects at high writing level, questions were the most proper ones; for those at low writing level, imperatives were the most appropriate one; for those at average writing level, the disparity in the impact of questions and imperative was not wide; 2) by comparing the results of three-round experiment, it was found that teacher's comments could really reduce the number of errors that the subjects had made in their writing drafts, in turn it might help the subjects to improve their writing ability in the process of writing experiment.The findings of the present study suggest that students hold a positive attitude towards teacher's comments and they hope to improve their writing quality with the help of teacher's comments. Different types of teacher's comments can definitely help the subjects to know where their disadvantages are and make them invest much time in their poor areas. From the students'aspects, they are supposed to hand in their writing drafts on time to be corrected by teachers in order to get detailed comments to improve their writing quality. Making writing revision facilitates noticing the gap in students'interlanguage and their problematic facets. Therefore, teachers should be encouraged to provide the students' with the appropriate types of comments in the process of English teaching.The whole paper consists of six chapters altogether. Chapter one is a brief introduction about the background, the purpose and significance and the organization of the thesis. Chapter two copes with a review of literature including the related definitions and the empirical studies on the relationship between teacher's comment types and students'writing revision both at home and abroad. Chapter three offers the theoretical underpinnings of the present study. Chapter four describes the research methodology in detail, including research questions, subjects and instruments, research procedures and data collection. Chapter five presents data analysis, the results of the research and the discussion of the results. Chapter six draws a general conclusion from the present study and points out the implication to English learning and teaching and finally some limitations are put forward.