On The Effects Of Self-Correction And Peer-Correction Integration On Chinese Learners’ English Writing

It is not avoidable to make mistakes in the process of college English writing. Correction (or feedback) has become an effective way to improve learners’English writing and it is considered as an indispensible stage in college English writing. Yet, the college English writing is still not satisfying, though different methods have been utilized to improve non-English majors’ writing proficiency (Zhang Xuemei,2006).The students mainly focus their attention on words, phrases, or grammar without organization of thoughts from the perspective of discourse and content (Zhang Shuangxiang,2007), which result in the lack of writing skills and the low progress of English writing. According to the nature and function of writing, organization/development and content/idea are the keys to the improvement of English writing proficiency, for writing in second language acquisition (afterwards SLA) is viewed as a process of meaning-discovering, instead of surface-level error correction for writing product (Zamel,1982).This study aims at finding the answers to the following questions, depending on the achievements and limitations of recent correction or feedback research.1. What is the effect of the integration of self-correction and peer-correction (afterwards SPCI) on college English writing proficiency of non-English majors?1) What is the general effect of the SPCI on the college English writing proficiency of non-English majors?2) What is the effect of the SPCI on content/idea, organization/development and language of students’ writing respectively?2. What is the attitude of the non-English majors towards the SPCI in college English writing?72sophomores of non-English majors in two intact classes from Anhui Science and Technology University participated in this study. The instruments in the study were writing tasks, self-correction forms and peer corrections form, two tests, and the two questionnaires and interview. First, the writer got to know the college English proficiency of all the subjects of two classes with the pretest and defined the two classes as experimental group (afterwards EG) and control group (afterwards CG) randomly. Then, the EG were divided into9small groups based on the pretest. Later, the correction forms, designed by the author, were distributed to the participants in EG for self-correction and peer correction training. In CG, the correction forms were also handed out to the participants for self-correction training. Finally, the SPCI and teacher correction with self-correction were conducted in the EG and CG respectively through three writing tasks. And each task was required to complete for more than once. After the three writing tasks, a posttest was held for both EG and CG immediately. SPSS12.0was applied to the analysis of the data collected.The findings are1. The SPCI mode is more effective than teacher correction, though both are effective in improving non-English majors’ English writing proficiency.1) The SPCI mode is more effective than teacher correction, although both are effective in improving the students’ overall English writing proficiency.2) The SPCI mode is more effective in improving content/idea, organization/development and language than teacher correction.2. The students in EG are becoming increasingly slipping into the SPCI mode. Compared with teacher correction, they prefer the SPCI, which indicates that the students are thirsting for independent problem-solving and exchange and collaboration among themselves.This study shows that non-English majors are justified in capability of self-correction and peer correction to some extent in English writing and the SPCI mode is proved to be effective in improving the non-English majors’ English writing proficiency. Therefore, the SPCI mode can be utilized in English writing teaching and learning. And the students should be encouraged to take part in the error correction in English writing.