The Effects Of Teachers’ Written Feedback On Non-english Majors’ Writing

So far, some teachers and scholars have extensively studied the effect of feedback on the learners’ writing, but their final conclusions are not consistent. As for English writing, the feedback is an input process that provides the information of correcting the mistakes in a composition, which helps authors express their thoughts more accurately. Teachers’ written feedback can help learners be aware of the problems in their composition correctly, and then they can correct them. In this way, students’ writing abilities, or even their comprehensive proficiency of the second language might be improved.Based on the input and output hypothesis, process writing theory and interaction hypothesis, this study investigated the writing skills of non-English major sophomore students in a common university and the influences with the help of teachers’ different written feedbacks, namely indirect symbolic code error correction feedback and direct error correction feedback.In this experiment, there were 58 subjects and the experimental and control classes were parallel classes, with each class 29 students. Before the experiment the researcher conducted the first part of the questionnaire, mainly to learn students’ interest in learning English and English Writing. It was found that although they have been learning English for nearly ten years, they did not have much interest in English. As for English writing, it is considered to be the most difficult task for them to engage in.After that the researcher performed the experiments of 18 weeks. The writing materials used are the composition part of CET Four, and process writing was used both in experimental and control classes. Throughout the experiment, the teacher asked all the subjects to complete a composition every three weeks, which is a period. In the first week the researcher asked the students to complete the composition within 40 minutes, and then handed in to the teacher. After that graded them by two different teachers, and at last gave feedbacks according to different methods(indirect symbolic code error correction feedback and direct error correction feedback). After that the teacher would hand out their compositions, and ask them to read the compositions and correct their mistakes carefully within the stipulated time. At the same time, they should rewrite the composition and try to proofread. As for the difficult mistakes that cannot be corrected by the students themselves, they may ask their peers or teachers for help. From the fourth and sixth week, a new cycle of exercises then is done.In this study, the researcher used qualitative and quantitative research methods, and made a pre-test and post-test. Finally the researcher conducted P values by putting the experimental data into SPSS and analyzed the first and last compositions. The results of the pre-test was that P values were more than 0.05, indicating that the two classes were at parallel level, but in the post-test compositions, P values were less than 0.01, indicating that there was a very significant difference in mean scores between the two groups, which told us there were different results led in by he two methods. In addition, the researcher also analyzed the accuracy and complexity of grammar(verb, noun, conjunctions, advanced vocabulary and sentence structure) for specific details and made T-test, finding that experimental class made more prominent progress in advanced vocabulary and sentence structure, while control class did better in verb and noun.After the experiment, the researcher conducted another questionnaire including ten questions, which mainly indicated the students’ attitudes towards teacher’s different feedbacks. Finally, in order to make up for the vulnerabilities of the experiment and questionnaires, also to understand students’ perceptions of the feedbacks in details, the researcher had several "good", "medium" and "poor" students from two classes interviewed, and their conversations were written down. Through the questionnaires and interviews, the researcher found that most students still preferred indirect symbolic code error correction feedback, especially the students of high English level, but for the students of lower level they preferred direct correction.In short, through this experiment we can conclude as follows:(l) The experimental class using the symbolic code error correction feedback made a more apparent progress than control class.(2) The majority of students, especially at higher English levels, preferred the symbolic code error correction feedback. While for the students of lower levels, they liked direct correction better. In the later writing feedback, teachers should try to individualize. For most students the teacher can use indirect feedback, but for the students at lower English level, direct correction feedback will be better.