A Study On Teacher Written Feedback On Senior High School Students' English Writing

As an important language skill,English writing is an indispensable link in the field of writing teaching.Teacher written feedback plays an active role in improving students' writing proficiency,it is also a kind of continuation of the process of writing,its effectiveness will influence directly the improvement of students' writing proficiency in the long term.Teacher written feedback is a main way that teachers usually adopt in writing,teachers give some specific and instructional suggestions on students' composition through written feedback,even they would correct errors in person,so that it can be conducive to improve students' writing proficiency.It is no doubt that written feedback would be helpful to the quality of students' composition,furthermore,making a difference to students' writing level in the long run.However,what is the current status of written feedback? Are there any existing problems? How do students deal with written feedback? These problems are worthy to carry out some investigations.Under the guidance of Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development theory,Long's Interaction Hypothesis and Schmidt's Attention Theory,this thesis takes 600 students with three grades and 20 English teachers as the research subjects in the No.1 high school of Chayouzhongqi,and taking questionnaires and interviews as the research tools.The present study is aimed at investigating the characteristics of teacher written feedback in this high school.The author attempts to answer two research questions:1.What is the current status of teacher written feedback on English writing in high school?2.What are the students' responses to teacher written feedback?Through detailed analyses and discussion of the questionnaires,interviews and the sample analysis of students' compositions,the results show that: 1.Most of English teachers acknowledge the importance and necessity of teacher written feedback,which is beneficial to improve students' writing proficiency;They prefer to give more specific written feedback and positive comments,and thinking that discourse content and vocabulary are the most effective error correction and comments.What's more,teachers usually give students written feedback one by one;The main components of written feedback,that is,error correction,rank and suggestions of future work for improvement;Negative feedback is given more than positive feedback,teachers mainly adopt the direct feedback and form-focused feedback,but the content-focused feedback is often neglected.Many teachers think that there are three effective types ofwritten feedback,namely,taking the indirect feedback as the main method,direct feedback is the auxiliary,positive feedback as well as suggestions of future work for improvement.And comments on grammar or language us are given more by teachers,and its types of comments are very abundant,but it doesn't attract students' much attention.In fact,teachers have some difficulties in giving written feedback,firstly,written feedback is a heavy job,there is still a lack of effective strategies and methods at present;secondly,almost a half of students pay less attention to the teachers' written feedback.2.On the whole,students' responses to teacher written feedback are not active.Nearly a half of students take it seriously and make some modifications.And a third of students would choose to rewrite their compositions;If students don't understand their written feedback information,a majority of them consult teachers,over a half of them only think it seriously,only fewer students consult students.From the major findings of this study,it is suggested that teachers and students hold different viewpoints about the teacher written feedback in the aspect of feedback types and ways of composition correction,so strengthening both sides' interaction and reaching the consensus are very essential;Teachers need to change their notions on the written feedback,strengthening content-focused feedback;Teachers should try out diversified feedback,making use of peer evaluation and group feedback;Enriching the types and strategies of written feedback,personalized feedback should be adopted by teacher aiming at students with different English writing level;Finally,supervision after receiving teacher written feedback and rewriting should be strengthened by teachers.