A Study On The Effects Of Teacher Feedback On College English Writing

English writing, as one of the five basic skills of language learning and inseparableaspect of communicative competence, has drawn more and more attention in the EFLresearches. Feedback is a crucial procedure in writing process, and it can effectively improvethe students’ writing proficiency. At abroad, the effects of different types of teacherfeedback on students’ writing have been examined by a substantial quantity of researchers.However, the researches concerning the effects of teacher feedback are scarce in China.This study aimed to explore some problems concerning the effects of content feedbackand form feedback in college English writing fluency and accuracy, hoping to improve theteaching and learning of foreign language writing in China. It was a study on the effects oftwo different types of teacher feedback on EFL writing.60non-English majors from JinzhouWenli College of Bohai University participated the experiment, which lasted four months,one lesson every two weeks. They were divided into two groups,30participants per group.The participants in Group1received the form feedback that was given by the researcher, andthe participants in Group2received the content feedback that was given by the researcher.After the participants carefully read the corresponding teacher feedback, they were asked forrevising their compositions. At the end of the experiment, the questionnaire was distributedto the participants and collected during a regular lesson.The main findings of this research are as follows:Firstly, there were differences on the improvements on students’ English writing, whenthey received different feedback. The students receiving form feedback gained much moreprogress on accuracy than those receiving the content feedback did. While contentfeedback helped much more significantly on improving fluency than content feedback did.It suggested that the two types of feedback could help students achieve their writing, andshould gain the same importance.Secondly, from the questionnaire, most students expected teachers to providefeedback on their errors and found that teacher feedback did help them improve theirwriting accuracy and fluency, but they usually spent too little time in correction andrevision to improve their writing. It indicated that teacher feedback should not only pointout the errors or some advantages and disadvantages, but help to cultivate the students’abilities to revise the composition independently. This research provides the empirical evidence about the effectiveness of the formfeedback and content feedback on the improvement of writing accuracy and fluency. And italso provides some pedagogical implications of English writing instruction in China.