Effects Of Teachers' Different Types Of Written Corrective Feedback On Junior High School Students' Writing

Writing,as one of four major English skills,plays a crucial role in English teaching in the middle school stage.It can reflect students' comprehensive English ability.Nevertheless,writing is also a major weakness for Chinese students in English learning.During the past several decades,teachers' feedback has been regarded as an important factor to improve students' writing ability,and lots of researches have been made to explore the effects of teachers' written corrective feedback.However,those studies have not reached a consensus conclusion.Some researches admit the effects of teachers' written corrective feedback in improving students' writing performance.While others hold that teachers' written corrective feedback is harmful and should be abandoned.Thus,whether teachers' written corrective feedback is effective or not,which is still full of controversy.The thesis mainly aims to investigate the effects of teachers' written corrective feedback on junior high school students' English writing.The research questions of this thesis are as follows:(1)Can teachers' written corrective feedback improve junior high school students' writing performance?(2)Which types of written corrective feedback are more helpful in enhancing their writing performance,direct feedback or indirect feedback?(3)What are the students' attitudes towards teacher' written corrective feedback?The study conducts an eight-week experiment with two parallel classes of students in the ninth grade of Lanzhou No.45 Middle School.Class 1 is treated as direct group,and class 2 is treated as indirect group.In the direct group,teachers provide direct feedback on the students' composition,while in the indirect group,teachers provide indirect feedback on the students' composition.It is necessary to state here that the learning content,writing materials,writing requirements,scoring standards,writing time,and class schedule of the two classes is the same.The only difference is that teachers provide different types of written corrective feedback on students' composition of the two groups.Teachers provide written corrective feedback on students' composition of the two classes according to the following two dimensions: content and linguistic form.All subjects of the two groups take part in the writing tests before and after the experiment,and finish attitude questionnaires before and after the experiment.The data are analyzed by SPSS 21.0 to draw a conclusion.Through the data analysis of pretest and post-test,it is proved that teachers' written corrective feedback is effective in improving junior high school students' writing performance.In addition,for the vast majority of junior high school students,direct written feedback is more helpful in enhancing their writing performance.Through the comparison of pre-questionnaire and post-questionnaire,the researcher draws the following conclusions:At first,junior high school students are aware of the importance of English writing and strongly expect to receive teachers' written corrective feedback.In addition,the majority of students take a positive attitude towards teachers' written corrective feedback and believe that teachers' feedback is conducive to improving their English writing.