Effect Of Different Forms Of Written Corrective Feedback On Junior High School Students' English Writing

As one of the four basic skills of English learning,writing is of great importance.However,it is especially difficult for many foreign language learners.For decades,many researchers and teachers focus on how to improve learners' writing accuracy.Some(Ferris,2004;Ferris & Roberts,2001;Karim & Nassaji,2018)believe that written corrective feedback(WCF)can improve learner's writing accuracy,but Truscott(1996,2007)questions its efficacy.As a controversial topic,more evidence is required.Similar research conducted abroad is earlier than at home.In recent years,a lot of research(Bitchener,2008;Ferris,2002,2004;Ferris & Roberts,2001;Karim & Nassaji,2018)about the effectiveness of WCF on second language writing has been carried out abroad.At the same time,related domestic research(Chen & Li,2009;Hou,2018;Li & Deng,2012;Wang & Li,2014)has sprung up,one after another.The participants of much research are college students,English major students or senior high school students.Junior high school students,however,receive less attention.Besides,it is even rarer that students' learning level,a possible influential factor,is taken into consideration.Based on the review and organization of teachers' WCF and theoretical basis,this research which is about the impact of teachers' WCF on the improvement of students' writing accuracy,aims to resolve following research questions:1.What is the effect of direct CF and metalinguistic CF on students' English writing accuracy?2.For students at different proficiency levels,which WCF is more efficient for the improvement of their English writing accuracy?3.What are students' attitudes and preferences towards teachers' WCF?An eight-week experiment is conducted by the author to find answers.The author selects research participants who study in a junior high school in Haining,Zhejiang province,and groups them.During the experiment,students need to complete five writing tasks and receive different treatments from the same researcher.Besides,all students are asked to finish a questionnaire and 18 students who are selected randomly from two classes are interviewed by the researcher.Finally,the author collects,organizes and analyzes the data.The data are analyzed by the social science statistical software 24(SPSS 24).In this study,three research instruments,five writing tasks,a questionnaire,and 18 interviews,are used for data collection.Descriptive statistics,independent samples t-test,and paired samples t-test are mainly used for data analysis.The present study finds:1.Both direct CF and metalinguistic CF are effective on the improvement of students' English writing accuracy in the immediate posttest and the delayed posttest.2.For higher-level groups and middle-level groups,a significant difference exists neither in the immediate posttest nor in the delayed posttest.Besides,after four exercises,lower-level students in the direct CF group outperform those in the metalinguistic CF group.3.Most students attach great importance to English writing and teachers' WCF.But a great number of students believe that English writing is difficult and the errors they made are mainly caused by the lack of vocabulary,the poor grasp of English grammar rules and the Chinese thinking way.When students feel confused about how to correct errors,they tend to think by themselves or ask for help from classmates.Although almost all students are satisfied with the teachers' WCF they received,improvements are still needed for some learners,like comments,face-to-face conferences and so on.Based on these findings,the present research provides the following suggestions for writing teaching:1.Teachers can adopt WCF in writing teaching,such as direct CF and metalinguistic CF.2.When providing WCF,teachers should consider the influence of students' learning proficiency.Because various types of WCF have different effects on students with different learning proficiency.3.Teachers should encourage students to correct by themselves or with their partners to improve their ability to find and resolve language errors.Many students mentioned in interviews that they are more inclined to think and correct by themselves or seek help from their classmates when they have problems.Besides,due to the limitations of the present study,some suggestions for future research are provided as well.First,research samples should be enlarged.Second,researchers can focus on the effect of WCF on the performance of middle-level junior high school students.Third,the relationship between teachers' WCF and error types can be a research point.