A Study Of Teachers' Written Feedback In Senior High English Writing Teaching

English writing is very important in both Second Language Learning and Foreign Language Learning,which is widely recognized by many language teachers and researchers.Feedback is especially important in writing teaching.How to provide effective feedback has always been the focus of English writing teachers and researchers in China and foreign countries.In recent decades,teachers' written feedback has been given close attention to by experts.Relevant research in foreign countries is conducted in Second Language Learning context,and research in China mainly takes undergraduates and students in junior or senior schools as subjects.Although the previous research,to some extent,can provide guidance and enlightenment for high school writing teaching,they are not completely applicable to English writing teaching in Chinese high schools,because of the possible differences in research context and subjects.Therefore,the author focused the research on English teaching in China,hoping to make a contribution to relevant teachers' written feedback in China.The author chose the following research subjects from Anren Middle School inDayi,Chengdu: 24 English teachers,100 students(chosen at random)and another 102 students respectively from Class 9 and 10 in senior three.The research took about four months and collected several qualitative and quantitative materials.Among these materials,24 questionnaires for teachers and 100 questionnaires for students(chosen at random)were used as reference for research into methods of written feedback in Anren Middle School.100 writing samples and the marks of six tests were used as reference for determining the efficacy of teachers' written feedback based on students' different writing levels.This research was based on Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development and looked into two aspects: the commonly used approaches of feedback in Anren Middle School and the efficacy of teachers' written feedback based on the students' different current writing levels and teaching objectives and requirements set according to students' zone of proximal development.The two major findings are presented here.The first finding is the status quo of teachers' feedback in Anren Middle School as follows: first,most teachers and students attach great importance to feedback and agree that feedback is beneficial to improving students' writing levels;second,currently,teachers in this school mainly utilize five types of feedback.Teachers' written feedback,consisting of marks,grades,corrections or comments,is most commonly used.Correction is welcome among teachers and students and it can be either direct or indirect.The focus of feedback lies in structure,grammar and content,which is in accordance with students' expectations.However,there are some following limitations lying in these approaches: many students are not interested in writing and lack confidence,so they tend to rely on the teachers' help;teachers seldom provide feedback on students' revised work.Only a few teachers write comments and there is a difference between teachers' intention and the students' perception.Secondly,providing teachers' written feedback according to students' zone of proximal development writing levels can not only advance students' writing levels,but also more efficiently improve certain aspects of students' writing ability.Meanwhile,most students agree that comments can motivate them and develop their interest in writing.Based on the findings,there are several recommendations on how to improve the efficacy of teachers' written feedback: first,teachers are advised to take students' zone of proximal development into account and selectively give different feedback to students according to their different writing levels.Second,teachers are advised to more frequently provide feedback on revised versions.Third,teachers are advised to take full advantage of marks and comments to cultivate their motivation and interest.In summary,although this research was limited in number to the teachers and students involved and it cannot completely avoid the disturbance of other factors,it can,to some extent,reflect the status quo and problems of feedback in high school English writing and provide research materials for future research in China.The author hopes that this research can benefit English writing teaching in high school.