On The Effect Of Positive Feedback On Senior High School Students' English Writing Ability

As one of the four basic skills of English learning,writing accounts for a large proportion in college entrance examinations.Therefore,it is of great significance to Chinese EFL students in senior high schools.However,in the long-term practical teaching,front-line English teachers have a tendency to focus more on the outcome so that the writing process is neglected.Most of the teachers continually employ a kind of time–consuming and inefficient writing feedback,that is,“students write and teacher corrects”.This kind of traditional feedback makes a lot of students lose interest in English writing,thinking that what score they can achieve in English writing depends on luck.And thus,they don't feel hopeful about English writing.Writing feedback is undoubtedly an essential part of writing teaching.Good writing feedback can have a great influence on students' learning motivation and enthusiasm and enhance students' writing ability and level,which helps promote a virtuous circle in English writing teaching.However,as a front-line English teacher who works more than ten years in a senior high school,the author feels very puzzled and worried about the fact that although teachers spend a large quantity of time and energy in revising students' writing and giving them feedback information,what the teachers have done brings about little outcome.Therefore,considering these existing problems in English writing and writing feedback,the author strives to find out a model of feedback to appeal to senior high school students,which can help solve the problems in contemporary English writing teaching and cater to the requirements of the English Curriculum Standards for High School.Positive feedback the author mentions in the thesis is a kind of integrated feedback model,consisting of three steps,that is,peer feedback in groups and self feedback by the writer after the first draft,teacher-individual conferences andteacher-group conferences after the second draft and teachers' summative written feedback on the writer' third draft.The thesis is targeted at exploring two major aspects: 1)What is the effect of positive feedback on senior high school students' writing ability and level? 2)What are the students' attitudes towards the application of positive feedback in English writing teaching?The research was carried out in a class from senior two of one common senior high school in Jiangsu province.It lasted almost one semester.There were 32 participants,all coming from the same class taught by the author.Besides their written texts and collaborative dialogues,the author also collected,organized and analyzed data from the pretest and the posttest,as well as three questionnaires respectively before,during and after the implementation of the research.The data collected and analyzed came in the form of the texts written by the students,transcribed collaborative dialogues,questionnaires and so on.Through the analysis of the data,the author came to the conclusion that positive feedback has positive effect on senior high school students' writing ability.Most students have made obvious improvements in expressing the main idea and laying out the passage properly.Students' English thinking ability has been greatly developed.Futhermore,students' handwriting has changed for the better.In the meanwhile,as questionnaires and interviews showed,almost all the students have positive attitudes towards the application of positive feedback in English writing teaching.Finally,several limitations that appeared in the research have been mentioned and some suggestions about future application of this kind of feedback model have been put forward.