An Investigation Into Junior Middle School Students' Attitudes Towards Teachers' Written Feedback For English Writing

With the development of process approach for English writing in the 1970 s,more and more attention has been paid to the process of how to provide students with correct written feedback. However, researches mainly focused on improving the effectiveness of corrective feedback, and very few researches paid attention to the students' attitudes towards teachers' written feedback for English writing.In addition, most of these studies were conducted for university students.Therefore, it is necessary to conduct a study to discover the students' attitudes towards teachers' written feedback for English writing in secondary schools in China.The participants of this study were 153 junior Grade two students from three different classes of Jingdezhen NO.9 middle school. They were asked to answer a questionnaire called “attitudes and expectations for the teachers' written feedback” adopted from Lee(2008). After the questionnaire survey, six of the students were asked to be interviewed. The study attempted to answer the following research questions:(1) what are students' attitudes towards English writing?(2)What kinds of written feedback do the students receive?(3)What are students' attitudes and general preferences of the teachers' written feedback?(4)What are the students responses to teachers' written feedback? The quantitative data were analyzed by the SPSS 19.0 and the qualitative data were transcribed and categorized by the researcher.A number of findings were revealed in this study. First of all, most of the students held a relatively positive attitude towards English writing. They realized the importance of English writing and had a great interest and confidence in the English writing. Secondly, most of the students indicated that they received guidance commentary, and that the content of the commentary mainly focused on the grammar and vocabulary. Thirdly, many students had a positive attitude towards teachers' written feedback. They regarded written feedback as necessary and helpful. As for the students' preferences for the teachers' written feedback, detailed commentary,grammar feedback,direct feedback and comprehensive feedback were welcomed by most of the students. Fourthly, most of students reacted to teachers' written feedback actively. They checked the grade,commentary and also revise it.Based on the results and discussion, some implications can be offered for English teachers and students. Firstly, teachers should keep a balance between grammar feedback and content feedback. Secondly, teachers should apply peer feedback or self-editing in order to cultivate students' autonomy. Thirdly, teachers are advised to use the process approach in the writing class. Fourthly, teachers should use some strategies to soften the force of criticism.Finally, teachers should increase the communication with the students and adjust their written feedback according to different students and writing tasks.