An Investigation Into Senior High School Students' And Teachers' Perspectives Of Teacher-Written Feedback For English Writing

As an important language output skill,English writing is an important part of English teaching.In the National Matriculation Entrance Test of Jiang Xi province,the score of writing(25 points)has always been high,but the average score of English compositions in the NMET is not optimistic every year.Therefore,in recent years,there is endless research on how to improve senior high school students' English writing.And most of these researchers found that among the many factors affecting senior high school students' writing level,teacher's written feedback is one of the important factors,which is of great importance in English writing teaching ability.However,most of the research focused on exploring the effectiveness of different types of written feedback and the research participants are in most cases college students or graduate students rather than high school students.Few studies have been devoted to exploring students' perceptions of teacher-written feedback.However,in fact,the learners' attitudes towards written feedback,to some extent,determine whether the teacher's feedback is effective or not.In addition,there were few studies comparing teacher's and students' perspectives of teacher's written feedback.In the present study,a total of 150 students participated in filling in the questionnaires and 9 of them were interviewed by using a semi-structured format.At the same time,12 seasoned teachers also participated in the process.The purpose of this study is to investigate:(1)students' perceptions and expectations about teacher-written feedback(2)teachers' perspectives of written feedback.It also involves teachers' actual written feedback.The results show that teachers and students are optimistic about teachers' written feedback.Most of them thought that teachers' written feedback is of great significance to improving the English writing ability.However,teachers' actual written feedback tendency is far from what students expect.For instance,the findings show that teachers pay more attention to the form such as grammar and vocabulary in students' compositions than students expected.Most of students hope their teachers not only revise their compositions conscientiously and carefully,but also provide more detailed and comprehensive written feedback and instructive comments.But teachers still corrected the errors selectively and roughly assigned grades or scores with few comments,let alone the positive and instructive comments and strategies.What's worse,the teachers hardly left time for students to revise.In addition,there are also differences between the majority of teachers' perceptions of written feedback and their actual written feedback.For example,the results of questionnaire analysis show that most teachers believe that students should be given enough time to revise themselves.Based on the results and discussions,some implications can be offered for the English teachers and students.Firstly,teachers should realize the importance of communication and timely understand the real attitude of students to written feedback,and then adjust their written feedback according to the different requirements and writing tasks.Secondly,teachers should keep a balance between the grammar feedback and the content feedback.Besides,the teachers should give enough time to students to self-editing.Thirdly,teachers are advised to use indirect feedback such as coded feedback to make the students know more about the meaning of different symbols.