A Study On The Effects Of Focused And Unfocused Written Corrective Feedback On The Grammatical Accuracy Of English Writing In High School Students

In recent decades,written corrective feedback has been one of the important areas in teaching writing and second language acquisition,and its research has shifted from "whether teachers should give written corrective feedback" to "how to give written corrective feedback effectively" stage.In current writing teaching,although most English teachers pay attention to the correction on the students’ composition,it consumes teachers a lot of time,and has little effect,and the grammatical accuracy of the students’ writing is not very high.Under this circumstance,English teachers in high school are struggling to seek effective written feedback to improve students’ writing accuracy.In order to solve this problem,researchers have carried out a lot of research,which shows that written corrective feedback can have a positive effect on students’ English writing.It is helpful for the students to find the gap between the existing level and the level to be achieved,and make corrections through it.It aims to meet the requirements of improving English writing.Based on different types of written corrective feedback,focused and unfocused written corrective feedback have attracted scholars’ attention.In this context,on the basis of extensive review of previous studies,in order to seek a more appropriate written corrective feedback method,the author randomly selected 107 students in the first grade of a senior high school in Chongqing as the research subjects and conducted the teaching experiment,of which Class 17 used unfocused written corrective feedback: 14 students were in the high-score group and 19 students were in the middle-score group,the rest of the students in the low-score group;Class 18 adopted focused written corrective feedback: 15 students were in the high-score group and 14 students were in the middle-score group,the rest of the students in the low-score group.Combined with a questionnaire,it aims to answer the following three questions:(1)What effects of focused and unfocused teacher WCF make in improving students’ grammatical accuracy in writing?(2)For students of different levels,what effects of focused and unfocused teacher WCF make in improving students’ grammatical accuracy in writing?(3)What are the students’ attitudes toward the two types of teacher WCF?The following conclusions are drawn from the data analysis:(1)There were no significant differences in the effect of focused and unfocused teacher written corrective feedback on the overall grammatical accuracy of the two classes.In the pretest and post-test of the experiment,the number of different types of grammatical errors in the two classes was different.After the experiment,the focused group made more obvious progress in verb and subject-verb agreement,while the unfocused group made more obvious progress in students’ noun endings and prepositions.(2)For students of different levels,the effects of using the two types of written corrective feedback are different.For high-score students,unfocused written corrective feedback has a more significant impact on their grammatical accuracy,and the students prefer this type of feedback that requires the teachers to revise students’ composition from different aspects.For middle-score and low-score students,focused written corrective feedback is more effective on the students’ grammatical accuracy,and the students prefer teachers to make targeted correction on the composition.(3)90.7% of the students clearly felt the effect of focused and unfocused teacher written corrective feedback on the grammatical accuracy;91.6% of the students believed that the teacher written corrective feedback would affect their attitudes toward the next writing.What’s more,students expected that teachers would provide written corrective feedback from grammar,vocabulary,composition structure,content and other aspects,so as to finally achieve the purpose of improving English writing ability.At the end of this research,combined with the experimental results,the author puts forward some pedagogical suggestions on how the front-line teachers can give written corrective feedback to the students’ writing:(1)Teachers should know the actual writing level of the students.Based on their language level,they should select the appropriate written corrective feedback method for the students and make differentiated feedback on the students’ compositions.For high-score students,the unfocused teacher written corrective feedback method can be more used.For middle-score and low-score students,it is more suitable to use the focused teacher written corrective feedback method to give correction on students’ errors and improve the grammatical accuracy of writing.(2)When giving written corrective feedback,teachers should take students’ own factors into consideration,and combine students’ expectations for the teacher written corrective feedback.And the teacher should also pay attention to students’ different needs,ensuring students’ confidence and enthusiasm in writing.In addition,teachers should also develop students’ habits of timely paying attention to the teacher written corrective feedback,so as to consolidate the application of knowledge points and to avoid making this kinds of mistake next time.