An Empirical Study On The Application Of Man-machine Feedback In English Writing Teaching In Senior High Schools

Feedback has been recognized as an important means of improving learners’ learning ability in the field of teaching research.As a new type of feedback method,the automated writing evaluation system is increasingly used in English writing teaching.It gives scores and diagnostic feedback instantly to students’ compositions.Students are able to revise and submit compositions multiple times based on the feedback information,thereby improving their writing proficiency continuously.However,with the deepening of the research,the researchers found that although the feedback from the automated evaluation system was timely and fast,it was not as good as the feedback from teachers in terms of the quantity and accuracy of error recognition.How to combine the automated evaluation system with human feedback to construct a multi-feedback mechanism has become one of the hot academic research issues.Based on the Process Approach and Formative Assessment Theory,the thesis addresses the following two questions:(1)What effects does man-machine feedback have on senior high school students’ writing revision?(2)What effects does man-machine feedback have on senior high school students’ writing ability?The study made an English writing teaching experiment for 16 weeksin a senior high school in Changsha.Man-machine feedback experiment procedures are as follows.Firstly,the students completed the first draft and submitted it to the Pigai System after teacher explained the task requirements and evaluation standards.Next,students continue to improve and submit the final draft according to the feedback from the Pigai System.Then,teacher feedback provides suggestions for feasible changes based on the evaluation criteria for writing tasks.Finally,the students revised their compositions again based on teacher feedback.At the end of the experiment,we interviewed a few students randomly to find out their attitudes toward man-machine feedback.In the end,the researcher implemented an analysis to explore the effects of man-machine feedback on the revision quantity,revision types,and revision quality of students’ writing as well as students’ writing ability.Results of this study are as follows:(1)man-machine feedback increases the opportunities for students to write multiple manuscripts.Students revised their spelling,punctuation,vocabulary,and grammar mistakes based on the AWE feedback.The structure and content are mainly revised based on teacher feedback.The students’ self-correction focuses more on the syntactic aspect.Meanwhile,the results show that the application of man-machine feedback into high school English writing teaching can promote rewriting and realize process-based and multi-manuscript writing,which significantly stimulate students’ motivation of learning writing.(2)The paired sample T test results show that with the help of man-machine feedback,students’ writing holistic scores and sub-item scores have been improved to some extent,indicating the effectiveness of man-machine feedback in promoting high school students’ English writing.Though there are limitations with the thesis,the study could play an optimistic part in enhancing senior high school students’ English writing ability.Under the proper guidance of teachers,students’ writing ability has been improved through multiple manuscripts in the automated writing evaluation system.Therefore,the combination of the automated writing evaluation system and teacher feedback could play a positive role in English writing teaching.