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A Study On The Choice Of College English Teacher Feedback From The Perspective Of Individual Learner Differences

Posted on:2015-03-12Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:X X ZhaoFull Text:PDF
GTID:2255330428456230Subject:Foreign Linguistics and Applied Linguistics
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Classroom teaching and learning process is an interactive circle interrelatedbetween teacher and student and a good and effective teaching process can facilitatelanguage acquisition. An interactive learning process cannot be successful withoutusing suitable teacher feedback. Therefore, teacher feedback plays an important andcrucial role in improving teaching effect during classroom teaching and learningprocess.Under the framework and theoretical guidance provided by Krashen’s InputHypothesis, Michal Long’s Interaction Hypothesis, Swain’s Output Hypothesis andtheory of Competency-based Instruction, this thesis reviews relative research onteacher and student’s interaction made by scholars both at home and abroad. Thisthesis has achieved certain degree of research findings at the aspects as feedback’sconnotation, type, individual learner differences’ connotation, type and teachers’choice of feedback. Many scholars have made great effort on the studies of teacherfeedback. However, few of them focus on teacher feedback from the perspective ofindividual learner differences. And these research findings have provided theoreticalsupport to the study of this thesis, however, with less systematic research structure,less comprehensive research findings and less specific research objects, researchfindings made by scholars still have some limitations, which is the major topicdiscussed in this thesis. This thesis mainly discusses three topics, which includeteacher feedback’s connotation and its classification, individual learner differences’connotation and its performance and teaching method of choosing feedback accordingto students’ individuality.On the basis of reviewing scholars’ views on teacher feedback and individuallearner differences, this thesis strives for the study on the method of choosing teacherfeedback according to students’ individual learner differences on every side throughclassroom observation, questionnaire and interview. Empirical research method isadopted. Subjects of the study include32experienced college teachers and84students from three universities. The data was collected by observing teacher andstudent’s interactive teaching and learning process in the class, interviewing teachersand distributing questionnaires to students. The research findings are as follows: 1) The subjects classify teacher feedback into five types, six types and seventypes according to teacher feedback’s content, function, form, nature, acceptability,teachers’ attitude, teachers’ speaking tone and teaching process. On the basis of datastatistics of students’ preferred feedback, teacher feedback’s classification isconfirmed according to its classification standard. And these research findings providepractical basis for the study on type of feedback, among which, feedback withcharacteristics like suitable feedback’s form, positive friendly speaking tone andcompound nature are most welcomed.2) The subjects propose different individual learner differences’ essentialfactors, among which, five types, six types, nine types and many other different typesof individual learner differences’ essential factors are put forward. On the basis ofquestionnaires, convergence population statistics on the essentials of individuallearner differences is counted, which shows “aspiration, learning style, aptitude,self-cultivation, age and sex” list the top six among those essentials. These researchfindings have provided practical basis for the study on essential factors and learningtypes of individual learner differences.3) The importance of choosing teacher feedback according to students’individuality is discussed in this thesis, and its importance is regarded as a necessityfrom the perspective of subjects. And students with various individual differenceshope that teacher choosing feedback should base on feedback’ individuality. Theywant teacher to choose the most suitable feedback according to their distinguishedcharacteristics and needs. While the application of this perception’s variety andflexibility needs to be carried out more into practice.After collecting those questionnaires, data statistics count on feedback’schoosing principles, among which, Competency-based Instruction, positivity,consistency, efficiency and understandable principle gain the most agreement ofstudents.During the process of distributing questionnaires, at the same time, writteninterview is under survey.32teachers of different academic titles, educationalbackground and taught courses are consulted and their views towards the topic offeedback choosing are concluded. Teachers’ opinions to the choice of feedback aresummarized as follows: teacher feedback must accord to the basic requirement of“correctness, exactness and efficiency”. Choosing suitable feedback, teachers shouldpay more attention to feedback’s denotative function in answering good students’ questions. Compared with the less professional students, the choice of feedbackshould focus on its concise form and patient repetition mood. The choice of feedbackshould accord with students’ individuality. Corrective feedback should definite andevaluative feedback should place particular emphasis on encouragement. Teachersunanimously agree with the opinions of preparing well to students’ possible questionsbefore the class and resolve good answers to it. The focus of Competency-basedInstruction is to understand students’ learning conditions, by putting them into theclassifications of “good, common, and inferior” types; teachers can better preparelessons, teach students and answer students’ questions according to students’individuality. Most of the teachers agree with the opinion of good students’ proposingmore questions. Answering students’ questions, teachers should extend content of thecurricular and knowledge base. Good students’ questions have leading function andcan represent certain population of students’ opinions. Therefore, teachers should takeanswering good students’ questions seriously.The reliability of questionnaires is to evaluate questionnaires’ reliability. Thevalidity of questionnaires refers to the evaluation on questionnaires’ usefulness. Thethesis analyzes questionnaires’ reliability and validity through counting statistics ofcollected questionnaires. The process of survey and questionnaire itself are reliable bycalculating ratio of collected questionnaires, ratio of efficiency questionnaires andratio of accepted questionnaires. From calculating data of validity, ratio of answerablequestions is high, which demonstrate that surveyed questions are basically answeredby the students. However, it cannot show whether these answered questions areadvisable to be used. Therefore, it needs to calculate “ratio of convergent opinions”.From calculating ratios of convergent opinions to main questions, these four answersof “type standard of feedback, students’ preferred feedback, students’ individualperformance and principles of choosing feedback” to the questions in questionnaireshave more than2/3ratio of convergent opinions, which means all of these questionsdesigned meet the requirement of the study. Therefore, opinions to these84retrievalquestionnaires’ question design are acceptable and valid, which can provide practicalsupport to the following study of the thesis.Many scholars have different definitions on feedback. Based on the previousdefinitions on feedback, teacher feedback can also include teachers’ comments onstudents’ homework and journals during the language learning process in addition toteachers’ answers to students’ questions. Feedback plays a very important role in improving teaching effect in the teaching process. Feedback can further internalize thecourse content. Feedback can deepen and extend course content. Feedback canpromote teacher-students’ inspiring interaction in teaching process, improvingstudents’ learning consciousness and enthusiasm, and improving teachers’ teachingresponsibility, which can naturally improve second language acquisition, and achieveteaching purpose. Feedback can smooth the communication between teachers andstudents, by way of knowing each other better through communication; harmoniousteachers-students cooperation and learning environment can be created.Based on feedback’s standards as “feedback’s content, teachers’ attitude,teachers’ speaking tone, feedback’s function, feedback’s form and feedback’s nature”from the results of survey and interview, feedback is classified into sixteen types of“correct, incorrect, simple, denotative, positive, negative, friendly, unfriendly,answerable, corrective, evaluative, straight-forward, descriptive, repetitive, compoundand single natured feedback”.From data analysis of vote ratio on essentials of individual learner differences,six essential such as “self-cultivation, aspiration, aptitude, learning style, sex and age”have drawn students’ approval and they are respectively win the vote of top sixessentials.Convergence population statistics on the essentials of individual learnerdifferences demonstrate students’ opinions towards essentials of individual learnerdifferences. However, it cannot tell the degree of each essential’s influence on teacherfeedback. Ranking these essentials and calculating “the important degree ofessentials” is to solve this problem. Through marking evaluating scores for essentialsin each scale, calculating evaluation scores of individual essentials, on the basis ofwhich, important degree of individual learner differences’ essentials and order ofindividual learner differences’ essentials are calculated and settled. From the orderingresult of these six essentials, four individual learner differences’ essentials whichlargely influence teachers’ choice of feedback are “aspiration, self-cultivation,aptitude and learning style”. And the most influential essential of individual learnerdifferences is “aspiration”. Therefore, when choosing feedback, teachers should firstlyconsider the essential of “aspiration”, with the secondly consideration place of“self-cultivation, aptitude and learning style”. The important degree of each essentialrepresents their degree of influence on teachers’ choice of feedback, while theinfluential distance among each of them cannot be figured out. In order to solve this problem, variance and standard deviation have to be calculated. From calculatingvariance and standard deviation, they are not diverge to a large degree, which meanssmall degree of influential distance among these six individual learner differences onteachers’ choice of feedback, which represents when choosing feedback, teachersshould have the overall consideration to these four essentials discussed above.From the perspective of English learning, four individual learner differences’essentials of “aspiration, self-cultivation, aptitude and learning style” form students’basic learning quality in fact. Based on different combinations of four main individuallearner differences of “aspiration, self-cultivation, aptitude, learning style”, students’individuality can be classified into “leading students, excellent students, ordinarystudents and less-competency students”. In order to improve teaching effect andstudents’ second language acquisition, teachers should choose feedback according tostudents’ individual types and quality.Teachers’ choosing feedback should accord with the basic requirement offeedback, and use more “correct, explicit, objective, suitable and effective” feedbackin order to improve teaching effect and enhance the level and quality of secondlanguage learning. When choosing feedback, teachers should follow“Competency-based Instruction, positive principle and effective principle” and theseprinciples should be reflected in their feedback choosing procedure. From thequestionnaires collected, students prefer “correct, straight-forward, positive andfriendly” feedback, which represents students’ strong desire of learning well and thehope of obtaining teachers’ more attention and care. All these students hope toestablish harmonious teacher-students relationship.From the questionnaires collected and interview consulting, both of these twodata indicate the choice of feedback should obey pertinent principle; choosing teacherfeedback should accord with students’ overall quality and personality. Therefore,correspondence relationship between students’ type and feedback choosing canrelatively clearly perceived and approximately represent the relationship betweenindividual learner differences’ four main essentials and overall quality and theirinfluence on choosing feedback. According to the questions of leading students,teachers should pay particular attention to feedback’s denotative function; as toexcellent students, teachers had better give due attention to feedback’s denotativeaspect; when involving ordinary students and less-competency students, teachersshould lay special emphasis on feedback’s repetitive function and use more friendly types of feedback. The scientific procedure of both teachers’ concentration onteaching materials’ preparation and conscious understanding of students’ individualdifferences and prominent characteristics are important during teachers’ feedbackchoosing process.The research findings have some implications for English classroom teaching.Confined by individual ability and time permission, the study on the choice offeedback is still unsystematic and not profound. And some questions need to bestudied further. For example, some deeper research questions, such as Englishfeedback’s characteristics, specific types of feedback and corresponding relationshipbetween teacher feedback and type of students’ individual learner differences remainto be developed into more profound research.
Keywords/Search Tags:Teacher feedback, individual learner differences, choice of feedback
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