The Effect Of Teacher Corrective Feedback On The Writing Of Non-english Majors

The thesis aimed to examine whether direct feedback and indirect feedback in theform of underlining with description of error type could improve linguistic accuracy ofthe writing produced by Chinese non-English majors and which type was moreeffective. In the meantime, the thesis also examined whether the content quality andfluency of students’ writings would be reduced because of the form-focused teachercorrective feedback. A large number of studies abroad have been conducted to explorethe effect of teacher corrective feedback on L2writing, but few quasi studies arecarried out in China, much less empirical research directed to the writings of theChinese non-English majors. Therefore, there is an urgent need to carry out the study.The study lasted13weeks. The subjects were25non-English majors (freshmen)of Zhujiang College of Southchina Agricultural University, all of whom were ofcomparatively high language proficiency from the four intact classes the author taught.According to the feedback types, the25students were divided into the direct group(n=10), the indirect group (n=10) and the control group (n=5). To the direct group, theerrors in their writings were underlined and replaced with the correct forms. To theindirect group, the errors in their writings were underlined and described in Chineseabout the error type. To the control group, no feedback was given. During the wholeexperiment, each student was asked to finish five argumentative essays and correcttheir errors in each essay on their own according to the feedback they received. Thelinguistic accuracy, the scores of the content and the level of fluency of the first andfifth essays were evaluated rigorously and analyzed by means of SPSS17.0.Through the analysis and comparison of the statistics, the major findings arelisted as follows:1) After four times of feedback, the direct and indirect groups have improvedaccuracy significantly in their subsequent writings, while the change of the controlgroup in accuracy is not significant.2) Direct feedback is superior to indirect feedback in the fact that it is moreeffective to help students to use language correctly.3) The improvement on accuracy of the direct and indirect groups is not achievedat the expense of the writing content and fluency.Given the controversy over the role of teacher corrective feedback in L2writingin academic circles, the present study has contributed new evidence to support teachers to continue applying corrective feedback to students’ errors in writing and sheds somelight on how to provide appropriate feedback.