An Exploratory Study Of Third-year English Majors’Interpretation&Use Of Teacher Error Feedback During Revision

Teachers’written feedback has much influence on students’revision. However, students’ misinterpretations of teacher’s feedback during revision will not only hinder the improvement of students’writing, but also upset teachers who spend much time and energy offering feedback. Most of the existing studies focused on factors underpinning revision theoretically or simply discussed the effectiveness of teacher feedback from teacher perspective. They seldom regarded students as active agents and explored their cognitive activities when revising with teacher’s feedback.This paper, taking the cognitive perspective and viewing students as active agents, tries to explore students’revising process with teacher’s feedback. The research questions are: how do students interpret teacher’s written feedback when revising and how do they make use of teacher’s feedback?The participants of this study are six English major juniors at a key university in Beijing. There are three stages during the two-month study. In the first stage, the researcher observed classes in the research site to get basic information. The second stage is collecting data with think-aloud and interview methods. The third stage is data and text analysis.The main findings of this study are as follows. Firstly, students did misinterpret or fail to comprehend teachers’written feedback during revision. This might derive from a failure to communicate with the teacher. Secondly, too general feedback was obstacles for their interpretation. Thirdly, in making use of teacher’s feedback, students were inclined to delete the original parts whether they have understood it or not. Especially, they did so when they needed to make "big changes"—on content or structure of the essay.The implications fall into two aspects. Teachers should pay more attention to students’ revising process, improve the way of giving feedback and communicating more with students. Students, on the other hand, should reflect upon their own revising process and try best to make use of teachers’feedback for an improvement of their writing.