A Study About The Effects Of Written Feedback And Oral Feedback On College Students’ English Writing

How to take effective measures to improve college students’ English writing proficiency is a key issue that attracts people’s attention in English writing instruction. Studies indicate that teacher feedback plays an important role in improving learners’ English writing ability in the process of writing teaching. There is still no consistent conclusion concerning the effects of different types of feedback on college students’ writing accuracy, thinking ability and overall writing proficiency. Therefore, the present study attempts to use teaching experiment to explore the effects of written feedback and oral feedback on Chinese college students’ writing accuracy, thinking ability and overall writing proficiency. The research subjects are 120 sophomores from two classes and they are non-English majors from Lanzhou Jiaotong University. This study also applies questionnaire investigate college students’ attitudes towards teacher feedback. The research questions are as follows:1. What effects will written feedback and oral feedback have on college students’ English writing accuracy? Are there any differences between them?2. What effects will written feedback and oral feedback have on college students’ thinking ability? Are there any differences between them?3. What effects will written feedback and oral feedback have on college students’ overall English writing proficiency? Are there any differences between them?The author collects data from four aspects: errors per 100 words, the score of thinking ability, the score of overall writing proficiency in the pre-test and post-test as well as the data from the questionnaire, and by using SPSS 16.0, the author runs the independent samples t-test and the paired samples t-test. The research results indicate: 1) Written feedback and oral feedback have positive effects on college students’ English writing accuracy, thinking ability and their overall writing proficiency. There is significant difference between the two types of feedback, and written feedback is more effective in improving college students’ writing accuracy and thinking ability; there is no significant difference between the effects of direct feedback and indirect feedback on improving college students’ writing accuracy and thinking ability. 2) There is no significant difference between the effects of written feedback and oral feedback on improving college students’ overall writing proficiency. However, there is significant difference between direct feedback and indirect feedback. 3) Students hold positive attitudes towards teacher written feedback and oral feedback.The present paper is composed of six chapters. Chapter One is a brief introduction which includes the current situation of college English writing, the purpose and significance of the research, and the overall structure of the thesis. Chapter Two analyzes common error types in learners’ writing and reviews the development of the theory of error analysis; and expounds on thinking ability and its role in writing as well as the definition and types of feedback in writing instruction; studies of feedback in writing abroad and at home are reviewed. Chapter Three explains the theoretical foundations of this study. Chapter Four describes and explains the details of research method, which specifically includes research subjects, research instruments, experiment treatment, research procedures, and data collection and analysis. Chapter Five analyzes the research results and then makes discussions of them. Chapter Six summarizes the research findings along with pedagogical implications for English writing teaching, at the same time, it points out the limitations of this study as well as suggestions for studies of writing feedback.