| It is known to all that writing is one of the important parts of language skills.It is one of the main tasks for the teacher to help students to improve their writing proficiency.Feedback has an important influence on students' writing proficiency.However,the college English teacher can not always provide students with timely feedback due to the limitations of time and energy as well as the imbalance of the number of the teacher and that of the students.Therefore,we need to find a way that can be both efficient and effective in providing students with feedback and improving their writing proficiency.With the development of science and technology,computer is applied in college English teaching more and more widely.It is a trend and symbol of modernization of language teaching and learning to integrate computer and network.Therefore,Automated Writing Evaluation(AWE)systems emerge as the time requires.However,there is no conclusive evidence for the effectiveness of the automated feedback and whether it is more effective than teacher feedback.Therefore,it is meaningful to examine the effects of the AWE on college English writing and make a comparison between AWE feedback and teacher feedback.The present research is based on process approach,output and input hypothesis,interaction hypothesis as well as formative assessment.It takes Juku Correcting Network(Juku)as an example to investigate whether automated feedback has any positive effects on college students' writing proficiency and whether students have different attitudes towards automated feedback and teacher feedback respectively.It also compares three types of feedback-only automated feedback,only teacher feedback as well as the integration of teacher feedback and automated feedback-to find out which type of feedback is the most effective in improving college students' writing proficiency.The subjects of the research are 160 non-English major sophomores from Yili Normal College.The research employs both quantitative and qualitative methods which include pre-test,post-test,four writing tasks,questionnaires and interview.The research questions are:(1)What are the effects of Juku feedback and teacher feedback on college students' writing proficiency?(2)What are students' respective attitudes towards Juku feedback and teacher feedback?(3)What are the opinions of students at different English levels on Juku?The research results reveal that Juku as an AWE system can improve students'writing proficiency to some degree,and most of the investigated students are for it.Moreover,Juku Correcting Network is more beneficial for low-level and medium-level students.It is more popular with them.There is no obvious effects on high-level students.They think it can not meet their needs and they prefer teacher feedback.And through analyzing students' writing samples,the author finds that Juku feedback pays more attention to correcting grammars and vocabulary and provides suggestions for the usage of words.Moreover,the comments given by it are very general.It has little feedback on the organization and content of students' compositions.In addition,by analyzing the questionnaires the author arrives at the conclusion that the most favorable way of feedback is the integration of Juku feedback and teacher feedback.We should not deny the effect of AWE,but teacher feedback is indispensable.AWE is a supplementary means with much room for improvement.The present research reveals that the the most effective way is the integration of teacher feedback and Juku feedback because it reaches a good balance between feedback for both language forms and the content and organization of the composition. |
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