A Comparative Study Of The Effects Of Focused And Unfocused Written Corrective Feedback On High School Students’ English Continuation Task

Feedback is a fundamental part of teaching English writing,and the types of feedback can be divided into focused and unfocused written corrective feedback.Many studies have been conducted in the teaching community on the effects of these two types of feedback on the differences in students’ English writing ability.However,little researches have been conducted on the effects of these two types of feedback on the current general promotion of continuation writing.This research further explores the effects of focused versus unfocused written corrective feedback on high school students’ English continuation tasks.The specific research questions of this research include: 1.What are the effects of focused and unfocused written corrective feedback on high school students’ continuation writings? Which one is more effective? 2.What are the differences in high school students’ attitudes toward focused and unfocused written corrective feedback?This experiment was conducted with 64 students in two parallel classes in the second year of senior high school in a Guangzhou middle school.One class was the focused group and received focused written corrective feedback;the other class was the unfocused group and received unfocused written corrective feedback.The experiment lasted for 10 weeks and was divided into three phases: pre-test,experimental intervention,and post-test.Two research tools,writing tests and interviews,were used in this research.The researcher used two continuation writing tests to verify the effects of the two types of written feedback on students’ continuation writings.This research also used semi-structured interviews to gain insight into students’ attitudes and preferences regarding the two types of written feedback.It can be found that 1)focused written corrective feedback can significantly improve high school students’ continuation writing levels in English.Unfocused written corrective feedback had a positive effect on high school students’ English continuation writing,but the effect was not significant.By comparing the effects of the two types of feedback on high school students’ English continuation writing,it can be found that focused written corrective feedback is more effective.2)Both types of teachers’ written corrective feedback can draw students’ attention to language errors,but most students prefer to receive focused written corrective feedback from teachers compared to unfocused written corrective feedback.Finally,based on the results of this research,it is advisable for teachers to adopt focused written corrective feedback in the process of teaching continuation writing in high school in order to promote the alignment effect of the continuation task and thus improve students’ English writing levels.