An Experimental Study On Effects Of Different Types Of Written Feedback On Advanced Learners’ English Writing Complexity In Junior High School

Being one of the five basic skills,writing has been viewed as a difficult part for English teaching and learning in junior middle schools.As writing complexity reflects a student’s writing proficiency to some extent,it is of significance to improve students’writing complexity in English teaching.Numerous studies have shown that corrective feedback plays an important role in improving learners’ writing complexity.However,fewer studies have compared the effects of direct written corrective feedback and indirect written corrective feedback on students’ writing complexity,and even fewer studies have focused on the effects of these two types of feedback on the writing complexity of advanced learners.Therefore,this study attempts to address two research questions based on the Noticing Hypothesis and the Scaffolding Theory:1)What are the effects of direct and indirect written corrective feedback on the lexical complexity of advanced learners in junior high school?Are there any differences between them?2)What are the effects of direct and indirect written corrective feedback on the syntactic complexity of advanced learners in junior high school?Are there any differences between them?In order to answer the above two questions,this study conducted a 12-week experimental research based on the average scores of students’ midterm and final scores of last semester,and the top 25 students were selected from two innovative classes of Grade Eight in a junior high school in Jiangmen City,respectively.During the treatment period,the subjects completed seven English writing tasks and received feedback five times.The two groups of students were named EC1 and EC2.The students in EC1 received direct written corrective feedback while those in EC2 received indirect one.Instruments such as writing tests and interviews were employed to collect data.The study found that 1)direct written corrective feedback is not effective in improving the lexical complexity of advanced learners while indirect written corrective feedback is effective in improving their lexical variation.2)Both direct and indirect written corrective feedback have improved the syntactic complexity of the students.Direct written corrective feedback significantly increased the mean length of T-units(MLT),while indirect one significantly increased the mean length of clauses(MLC),the ratio of clauses to T-units(C/T),and the ratio of dependent clauses to clauses(DC/C)for the advanced learners.The above findings have implications for the teaching of English writing in junior high school.Firstly,when targeting giving feedback for advanced learners on writing complexity,indirect written corrective feedback is more recommended,which can provide students with scaffolding aids,more room for active thinking and opportunities for cooperative learning.Secondly,it would be better to take students’proficiency,the difficulty level of the problems and teaching methods into consideration when giving feedback.Lastly,it’s better to combine direct written corrective feedback with indirect one to make complementary advantages,thus achieving a better effect on improving students’ writing.