A Study On English Writing Feedback In A Senior Middle School And Its Pedagogical Implications

English writing is one of the basic language skills to be commanded for students in Senior Middle schools and one of the core modules in English language teaching.For many students in China,English writing is a tough task and the teaching of writing also troubles teachers a lot.With the popularization of Process Writing Approach,the feedback of writing as an effective way to improve students' writing has been receiving more and more attention from many scholars and teachers.However,what are the problems of writing feedback in high school English teaching? Are there any gaps between the writing feedback students really want and students actually get? What are the features of the writing feedback students really want? And what are the ways to enhance the effectiveness of writing feedback? These questions are worth further explorations and this paper shows an attempt to examine the status quo of English writing feedback in senior middle schools in China,detect the problems and propose countermeasures accordingly in the hope of promoting the quality of writing feedback.This paper conducts a case study on teachers and students from Xiamen Foreign Language School through questionnaires,interviews as well as textual analysis of the writings.The findings show that there are some problems in the present practice of English writing feedback in high school:(1)The writing feedback is often presented in written forms by the teachers;(2)The writing feedback is too general to meet the diverse needs of the students;(3)There is usually more negative feedback than positive feedback from the teachers;(4)Teachers show more concerns about the form of the writing while the content is less weighted in the feedback;(5)The infrequency and incontinuity of teacher-student interactions lead to the inactiveness of students in the response to the feedback;(6)The writing feedback is not given in time and most teachers don't have systematic plans for feedback.To solve the problems and satisfy students' expectations of ideal writing feedback,suggestions for English writing teaching in high school are put forward:(1)More agents should be encouraged to participate in the process of giving writing feedback and more diverse methods of writing feedback are presented;(2)More personalized and diverse means of feedback are proposed with special concern for students' different personalities and individual development;(3)Teachers need to update the philosophy of feedback constantly and care more about students' personal development rather than the grades of their outputs when giving feedback;(4)There should be a balance between form feedback and content feedback.The proportion of content feedback is to be increased.Lastly,an interactive feedback model is constructed based on the theory of Community Practice and Process Writing Approach.This model is made up of students' writing club and teachers' feedback club.It is hoped that the application of the model will encourage students and teachers to participate in writing feedback actively and enhance the effectiveness of writing feedback in practice.