Impact Of Teachers’ Written Feedback Types On Students’ Writing In English: A Case Study

English writing is an important link in teaching process of a Second Language.Not only does it play an integral part of English classes, but also embodies thestudents at different level of English language ability. So, English writing has alwaysbeen stressed by English educators and researchers. It became gradually the focus ofresearchers’ attention in Teaching English as a Second Language. In the1970s, withthe generation of psycholinguistics, product-oriented pedagogy was graduallyreplaced. There has been process-oriented pedagogy based on the communicativetheory. Process-oriented pedagogy also stressed that writing process is acommunicative activity between teachers and students. Communication theory is inthe process of constructing meaning, feedback is one of important methods toestablish the importance of the readers’ reflection. In the Chinese situation of foreignlanguage teaching, hours used for English teaching are limited for non-English majorstudents, and specialized writing courses were not set up. Feedback provides aneffective communication bridge between teachers and students. Many scholars atabroad and home have conducted extensive discussion on teachers’ feedbackAccording to the viewpoint of interaction, in the research of Keh (1990), hemade feedbacks into three kinds: feedback of peers, conferences feedback andfeedback by comments or written feedback. For the status of second languageteaching in China, written feedback of three feedback types is the most common andmost effective method. Ferris (1995) considered that effect of teachers’ writtenfeedback cannot be ignored, and the key point is how to make it effective. Ferris(1997) also showed that teachers written feedback on student writing in the vastmajority of the changes have helped to improve students’ writing abilities, and teachers give more specific and longer comments, and greater effects are gained.Duppenthaler (2002) studied the effect of types of teachers’ written feedback onstudents’ learning motivation. He found that certain written feedback on students’writing has a positive impact on motivation and result of language learning. Ferris(1997) classified teachers’ written feedbacks into three types, question comments,imperative comments and statements. Ferris found that the specific written feedbacktypes appeared to be different impact on students’ writing. While in the study of WangJunju (2006), teachers’ written feedback is divided into five types due to the variousfunctions. Wang Linhai&SunNing (2007) classified teachers’ written feedback intosix types. They investigated the impact of these six teachers’ written feedback typeson revision of students’ writing, and found the impact of different teachers’ writtenfeedback types on revision of students’ writing is apparently different. According towritten feedback types of Ferris, Yoshihito Sugita (2006) investigated that writtenfeedback types can impact students at different writing levels.Determining and abiding by the comment rules of CET-4, from the feedbacktheory, this research explores the effect of various content-focused teachers’ writtenfeedback types on students at different writing levels. It also investigates students’attitudes, perceptions and expectations toward teachers’ written feedback. On thatbasis, the research finds the proper type of teachers’ writing feedback for students atdifferent writing levels and gains some pedagogical implications on English writingteaching in China.In present research, the subject involved two teachers and two classes, altogether107students in these classes, who are the second-year university microelectronics andarchitecture majors from Jilin University and The City College of Jilin JianzhuUniversity. At the beginning of the research,107participants who are divided intothree groups at different writing level based on their former CET-4scores. There werethree essay-writing tasks (single-draft) that demanded the participants to write on eachcomposition and the participants should write about150words per composition inlimited time about30minutes which was determined and abided by the rules ofCET-4and present their writing drafts on each composition task. The topics of the composition tasks were chosen from the CET with the purpose of maximizingstudents’ familiarity with these themes. Participants hand in their first drafts on time,and teachers revise these drafts on content-focused of composition. Participants’preliminary drafts with teachers’ written feedback are returned to participants,participants are asked for modifying their drafts based on the teachers’ writtenfeedback. According to it, students are required to modify their compositions in therevision period. Revision drafts of students and the first drafts with teachers’ writtenfeedback were handed in together in English class of next week. The data wascollected from both the original drafts and revised drafts. After the data were inputtedinto the computer, SPSS19.0was adopted to analyze the data. A piece of thequestionnaire (see Appendix) which was designed during the experimental processwill be handed out and filled in after finishing the experiment of composition by allthe participants. Designed questions in the questionnaire are better to understand theconsistency of students’ attitudes, expectations, reactions, inner needs and students’attitudes toward teachers’ feedback and their preferences for different treatments ofteachers’ writing feedback.Based on the data collected form experiment and questionnaire, the result showsthat:(1) Different teachers’ written feedback types have different effects on students atvarious levels.(2) Students at a high writing level usually prefer the questionsfeedback type. Imperatives feedback is effective to promote students at a low writinglevel who revise their writing drafts. Compared with another two feedback types,most students at average writing levels would like to receive statement feedback type.(3) Majority students have positive attitudes toward the teachers’ written feedback andthey all hope that teachers’ written feedback helps to improve their English writingabilities and skills.The significant of this research is that teachers and students both should payattention to English writing feedback. According to students on different writinglevels, teacher may adopt different feedback types to stimulate the enthusiasm ofstudents on writing revision. Different feedback types would advance students toimprove the logical thinking on English writing rather than revise grammar errors of composition. There are several limitations and weaknesses in the design of the presentstudy. The suggestion is that subjects can be increased and extended a cycle ofexperiments in the future research. However, this research indicated that teachers’written feedback types have positive influence to improve their English writingabilities and skills, and it provides some information for foreign language writingteaching.