The Application Of Computer Feedback With The Intervention Of Teachers (DFIT) To The College English Composition Course

Writing is one of the most important skills in language learning.However,the overall writing ability and writing motivation are relatively low in the current college context in China.Many factors lead to this phenomenon,among which feedback mode can not be ignored.In the traditional college English composition course teacher feedback is the main feedback mode,which has been proven to have its own restrictions through the long-term teaching practice.These restrictions,to some degree,impede the development of students' writing ability and wear down students' writing motivation.In order to improve the quality of the college English composition course,it is necessary to adopt a more effective feedback mode.The wider application of computers and the Internet to the education filed is increasingly influencing the teaching and learning activities.The Automated Essay Scorning systems(AES)are especially on the rise.Inspired by the Noticing Hypothesis and the Process Approach,a feedback mode – computer feedback with the intervention of teachers(CFIT)is considered to be comparatively more effective.This feedback mode,which combines the teacher feedback and the computer feedback,aims at taking full advantage of the strengths of the two feedback modes to optimize the college English composition course.Nevertheless,because of the limited research and practice,the breadth and depth of its effectiveness is still controversial.The purpose of this thesis is to explore the effectiveness of CFIT on college students' writing ability and writing motivation so as to find out whether this feedback mode can be applied to the college English composition course to help students improve their writing competence.The thesis tries to answer the following three questions:(1)Does CFIT improve students' writing ability?(2)Does CFIT exert positive influence on students' writing motivation?(3)Can CFIT be appropriately applied to the college English composition course?The empirical study was carried out in Zhejiang University of Finance and Economics from March to June in 2016.The subjects are 49 sophomore non-English major students from two parallel classes.In order to more directly investigate the effectiveness of CFIT,it is necessary to compare it with the traditional teacher feedback to find out its advantages and disadvantages.Therefore,these subjects are randomly divided into two groups – 25 students in the Experimental Class adopt CFIT while the rest 24 students in the Control Class adopt teacher feedback.The research instruments consist of six writing practices plus one optional writing practice,two questionnaires and interviews.The results analysis and discussion mainly focus on two parts: writing ability and writing motivation.In each part,holistic and analytic analyses are conducted.Qualitative and quantitative analyses are employed in the research.SPSS 17.0 is served as the analytic tool to calculate the data.From the data analyses,the three questions,which are put forward at the beginning of the thesis,are answered.The major findings are presented as follows:Firstly,in terms of the writing ability,the overall trend of the scores in the Experimental Class is on the rise.The mean score of the Experimental Class in the post-test has been increased significantly by 1.52 from 8.04 to 9.56.And the Experimental Class has made progress in all aspects of writing – vocabulary,grammar,content and organization,with more significant improvement in grammar,content and organization.Secondly,in terms of the writing motivation,changes are salient.As for the writing fluency,students in the Experimental Class write 13 more words in the post-test than in the pre-test.The enhancement is significant.They are more willing to compose more words in compositions.As for the writing autonomy,80% students in the Experimental Class voluntarily take part in the optional writing practice,which outnumbers that in the Control Class(56.5%).The fact displays that the Experimental Class have higher motivation.Their intrinsic interest of writing has been increased significantly while writing anxiety is reduced.Their attitudes towards feedback results become more active.Thirdly,taking the results of the writing tasks,questionnaires as well as the interviews into consideration,CFIT has exerted a positive effect on writing ability and writing motivation and it is accepted by teachers and students.Thus,it is self-evident that CFIT can be appropriately applied to the college English composition course.At the end of the thesis,some suggestions are put forward with the purpose of offering some reference to appropriately apply CFIT to the college English composition course.Limitations of the research are also pointed out.