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A Study Of The Effect Of Different Forms Of Feedback On Senior High School Students’ Writing

Posted on:2015-02-08Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:H L ZhangFull Text:PDF
GTID:2297330467470902Subject:English Language and Literature
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Writing teaching plays an important part in English teaching in high school as well as a majordifficulty in teaching. Although scholars at home and abroad have done a lot of surveys andresearches, lots of domestic secondary school teachers have devoted themselves to improving thestudents’ English writing skills as well, the writing level of the students is still not effectivelyimproved. In China, most high school students consider that English writing is difficult and it willnot be significantly improved no matter how much time they spend, and such issue is what theteachers confused. The students’ writing ability is not much improved and the similar mistakeremains constantly growing even though the students have practiced hundreds of writing and theteachers have spent thousands of efforts on these compositions and giving correspondingfeedbacks. Therefore, to explore effective ways of improving the students’ English writing skills isfairly necessary.Do different forms of feedback have effects on senior high school students’ writing? In thetheory of second language acquisition, the interactions between peers and between students andteachers are in favor of second language acquisition and development. The thesis is based onVygotsky ’s Social and Cultural Theory introduced to the field of second language acquisition byJames Lantolf, Constructivism and Cooperative Learning Theory advocated by Slavin, andexplores what impact that different forms of feedback has on English writing in high school. Themethods of the experiment are experimental research and interview investigation.As the experiment lasted for more than six months, the pre-test results of the experimentalstudy were the final scores on January10th,2014, and the delayed post-test results of it were thefinal scores on July20th,2014. In May,2014, in the middle of the experiment, the writer took themidterm essay scores as the Post-test results. The subjects are two parallel classes which are in thecharge of the writer. Both classes are science classes and the overall level of English and writingscores are fairly equal, which are designated as the experimental class and control class randomly.In the beginning of the experiment, the writer carried out the pre-training of peer feedback inthe experimental class, and there had been first draft---peer feedback---second draft---teacherfeedback---final finalized draft in each training process, focusing on the feedbacks such asgrammar, punctuation, spelling, content organization, chapter structure, ideas and writing skillsand so on. There have been fifteen compositions in total all through the experiment both inexperimental class and in control class. The compositions written by control class were conductedby single teacher written feedback. After the experiment, the writer used SPSS18.0software toanalyze the pre-test scores, the post-test scores and the delayed post-test scores separately. As thetotal scores were25points, the average essay scores in experimental class increased from4.69points to10.50points, and in control class the score increased from4.27points to5.94points. Theresults show that the combination mode of peer feedback and teacher feedback helps to improvethe writing skills and the achievements, and also it is stated the feasibility and effectiveness of thismode in high school English writing teaching. Therefore, the writer believes that the use ofdifferent forms of feedback in high school English writing teaching has a great effect on thestudents. Meanwhile, in the course of the experiment the writer finds that the students also havedifferent degrees of increase in writing skills with their writing thinking more flexible, and theability of extracting information more comprehensive. Compared with the blindly writing in thepast, the students can write an article with more complete structure, more natural convergence, and most students begin to use the learned vocabulary and try to use proper punctuations. Overallwriting skills as well as achievements in the experimental class are significantly higher than that inthe control class. At the same time, the writer interviewed different levels of students in eachgroup before, during and after the experiment. The experimental results show the students whohad received the experiment accepted both the peer feedback and the teacher feedback, especiallythe teacher oral feedback; The English writing skills can be effectively improved by usingdifferent forms of feedback to most of the students in high school. In particular, the teacher oralfeedback not only has a positive influence on the English writing scores of the high schoolstudents, but also is more conducive to promoting the feeling among fellows and the teacher toform a Co-operative learning; Using different forms of feedback can help high school studentsimprove their writing skills, enhance self-confidence and learn cooperative learning.The experimental study has proved a method that can improve the English writing skills inhigh school, which is the combination of peer feedback and teacher feedback, especially theteacher oral feedback, and the writer hopes a reference will be offered for future English writingteaching. Due to the limited experimental time and other conditions, there are some limitationsand some issues in the article remaining to be further explored.
Keywords/Search Tags:Peer Feedback, Teacher Written Feedback, Teacher Oral feedback, English Writing
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