The students’ attitudes towards teachers’ written feedback strategies on their writings at Vocational College of Posts and Telecommunications

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES LÊ HẢI ĐOÀN THE STUDENTS’ATTITUDES TOWARDS TEACHERS’WRITTEN FEEDBACK STRATEGIES ON THEIR WRITINGS AT VOCATIONAL COLLEGE OF POSTS AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS (Thái độ sinh viên cách thức phản hồi dạng viết giáo viên viết sinh viên trường Cao đẳng nghề Bưu Chính Viễn Thơng) M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111 HANOI – 2016 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES LÊ HẢI ĐOÀN THE STUDENTS’ATTITUDES TOWARDS TEACHERS’WRITTEN FEEDBACK STRATEGIES ON THEIR WRITINGS AT VOCATIONAL COLLEGE OF POSTS AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS (Thái độ sinh viên cách thức phản hồi dạng viết giáo viên viết sinh viên trường Cao đẳng nghề Bưu Chính Viễn Thơng) M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111 Supervisor: Assoc Prof Dr Lê Hùng Tiến HANOI - 2016 DECLARATION I, Lê Hải Đoàn, hereby declare that this thesis is my own work, and I have provided fully documented references to the work of others In addition, this thesis has not been submitted for assessment in other formal courses in any other university I also accept all the requirements of ULIS relating to the retention and use of M.A Graduation Thesis deposited in the library Hanoi, 2016 Lê Hải Đoàn ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First of all, I would like to express my sincere thanks to Associate Professor, Doctor Le Hung Tien, for the support, guidance and valuable critical feedback His help, stimulating suggestion and encouragement helped me a lot right from the beginning to the end of this study I would like acknowledge my thanks to the students at Vocational College of Posts and Telecommunications in Hanoi who helped me a lot and showed great willingness to take part in my survey My special thanks also go to my lecturers, my friends, my classmates for valuable comments and criticism, their interest and encouragement Last but not least, I want to express my deepest gratitude to my parents and friends for their love, care, tolerance and encouragement ABSTRACT This study investigates the students’ attitudes towards teachers’ written feedback at Vocational College of Posts and Telecommunications in Hanoi The participants included 80 non-English major freshmen The data were collected from survey questionnaire and the interview with 12 students at different level of English proficiency The results show that the students highly valued the importance of teacher’s feedback and had different attitudes towards each type of them; especially they prefer direct feedback to the others It is suggested that the use of direct should be maintained regularly, so as to not only satisfy student’s interests on writing, but also improve students’ writing fluency by practicing writing In terms of the students’ comprehension of teacher written feedback, the results show that most of them had difficulty in understanding uncoded and content feedback Based on their responses about the ways they deal with the feedback, they are divided into two groups: independent students who themselves tried to understand teacher written feedback through books or internet and dependent students who asked their teacher or friends for help Thus, it is expected that the research results can provide EFL writing teachers with pedagogical implications to improve EFL students’ writing performance PART 1: INTRODUCTION Rationale of the study “What is the shortest word in the English language that contains the letters: abcdef? Answer: Feedback Don't forget that feedback is one of the essential elements of good communication.” (Anonymous) English writing, going with global development, has become an important instrument for students to get better jobs Advice, evaluation, grades - none of these may give the descriptive information that students need to reach their goals in writing Moreover, marking student’ writing is always considered one of the most difficult tasks for an English teacher After receiving students’ written work, teacher starts correcting errors, rearranging word order, leaving comments and eventually giving the mark Some researchers in writing (Leki, 1991; Raimes, 1983) have belief in that giving feedback is one of the important methods for teachers to help the student writers improve their writing pieces Up to now, feedback used in educational context is considered as an essential part of the teaching and learning process to improve knowledge and skill acquisition Although many studies have been written on the subject of error correction in writing and the question about its’ effectiveness is open-ended, we have to admit that students want feedback and teachers feel obliged to provide it Moreover, many studies give more attention to the importance of feedback, the ways of providing and receiving feedback and how feedback has effect on students’ writing We can see in the study of Lee (2005), Noora (2006).“What have been neglected in those studies are preferences and attitudes of the learners and teachers towards error correction” (Katayama,2007) He also stated:“ Differences in learners” learning styles affected the learning environment by either supporting or inhibiting their intentional cognition and active engagement” In addition, “matching the learning styles of the students and the teaching style of the teacher would help improve students’ learning, attitudes, behavior, and motivation” (Ferris, 2003) Also, a large number of studies on feedback types have been carried out; however, a few ones pay attention to the ways the students deal with the errors after receiving feedback from their teachers It can be seen in some previous studies investigated the effects of different types of feedback on grammatical improvement in students’ writing (Fathman & Walley,1990; Padgate,1999; Hyland,2003) or surveyed students’ preferences for error correction (Cohen, 1987; Leki, 1991; Ferris, 2006) Therefore, it is crucial to find out the feedback through which students prefer receiving, their attitudes towards, their comprehension of and their attention to different types of teacher written feedback It is hoped that the results of this study would help teachers to be more effective in teaching English Aims of the study The aim of the present study is to examine the students’ attitudes towards teachers’ written feedback strategies Moreover, the study aims to find out whether the students understand the written feedback as intended by their teacher Finally, the study aims to find out the students’ strategies for handling feedback after they received their writings Research questions To achieve the purposes of the study, the following questions were developed: What are the students’ attitudes towards teacher’ written feedback strategies? To what extent the students understand teacher written feedback? How the students handle the feedback they receive? Significance of the study Feedback is an essential component of any English language writing course that second language students expect to receive It is necessary in the students’ whole writing process There exists a conflict between teacher written feedback on compositions and the learner’s interest This mismatch between the needs of the students and those of the teachers can affect the practical effectiveness of the written feedback REFERENCES Ashwell, T (2000) Patterns of teacher response to student writing in a multipledraft composition classroom: Is content feedback followed by form feedback the best method? 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NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES LÊ HẢI ĐOÀN THE STUDENTS? ?ATTITUDES TOWARDS TEACHERS? ?WRITTEN FEEDBACK STRATEGIES ON