Bài viết phân tích tác động của phản hồi tương tác của giảng viên đối với chất lượng bài viết tiếng Anh của sinh viên Việt Nam học tiếng Anh như một ngôn ngữ thứ 2. Chúng tôi thu thập trên 30 bài viết về 15 chủ đề của 03 sinh viên đại học người Việt trong 24 tuần. Tác động của phản hồi tương tác được phân tích theo chuẩn của Ferris, chất lượng bài viết được phân tích định tính theo chuẩn Viết Phân tích của Hoa Kỳ, so sánh kết quả sử dụng phương pháp ANOVA (định lượng).
Trang 1LỢI ÍCH TỪ VIỆC GIẢNG VIÊN NHẬN XÉT TƯƠNG TÁC VÀO BÀI VIẾT TIẾNG ANH
CỦA SINH VIÊN
1 INTRODUCTION
Teachers’ responses to student writing has been
acknowledged as central to teaching composition
(Freedman, Greenleaf, & Sperling, 1987) In
fact, since the early twentieth century, Carpenter
et al (1913) considered the role of response or
“criticism” to the teaching and learning of writing
as “one of the most important in the whole problem
of teaching English, upon which the value of the
criticism success in teaching composition finally
depends” (Carpenter, Baker, & Scott, 1913, p 142)
Responding to students’ writing is arguably
a most widely adopted method; yet it is time consuming and “the least understood” (Sommers,
1982, p 170) The questions of how to write helpful comments, to what extent teacher written response
is supportive to student revision, and whether student successful revision is the result of teacher comments, are never simple to answer
A growing body of research has attempted to answer these tricky questions Teacher written response has been examined in both first language
TÓM TẮT
Trong quá trình dạy và học viết tiếng Anh, giáo viên thường phản hồi trực tiếp vào bài viết của sinh viên, làm cơ sở để người học chỉnh sửa trước khi hoàn thiện bài viết Việc này được coi là tốn thời gian, công sức của giáo viên, nhưng giới nghiên cứu vẫn đang tranh luận về hiệu quả của
nó đối với chất lượng bài viết Trong nghiên cứu này, chúng tôi phân tích tác động của phản hồi tương tác của giảng viên đối với chất lượng bài viết tiếng Anh của sinh viên Việt Nam học tiếng Anh như một ngôn ngữ thứ 2 Chúng tôi thu thập trên 30 bài viết về 15 chủ đề của 03 sinh viên đại học người Việt trong 24 tuần Tác động của phản hồi tương tác được phân tích theo chuẩn của Ferris, chất lượng bài viết được phân tích định tính theo chuẩn Viết Phân tích của Hoa Kỳ, so sánh kết quả sử dụng phương pháp ANOVA (định lượng) Kết quả cho thấy, người học tiếp thu,
sử dụng gần 70% góp ý nhận xét của giảng viên, và có cơ sở thống kê để nhận định chất lượng bài viết lần cuối cao hơn lần đầu, đặc biệt về nội dung, bố cục, văn phong (không cải thiện về sử dụng từ và ngữ pháp) Kết quả nghiên cứu giúp cải thiện quy trình dạy và học viết tiếng Anh trình
độ đại học tại Việt Nam
Từ khóa: nhận xét của giáo viên, phản hồi, phản hồi tương tác, viết tiếng Anh.
TRƯƠNG ANH TUẤN * ; LANNIN AMY ** ; NGÔ QUÝ CHUNG ***
* Trung tâm gìn giữ hòa bình Việt Nam - BQP, ✉ tuanpkc@yahoo.com
** Đại học Tổng hợp Missouri, Hoa Kỳ
*** Học viện Khoa học Quân sự, ✉ cuaquychung@yahoo.com
Trang 2(L1) and second language (L2) writing classes
Teacher response, as agreed upon by most teachers
and researchers, has evolved into more than just
written marginal or end comments Responses may
include all types of interaction with student drafts
They could be formal, informal, in written, or oral
forms to a series of drafts, or to one polished final
paper Responses may be used in formal mainstream
classrooms, or in an informal, casual interaction
between teacher and student (Freedman et al., 1987)
Teacher response might be explicit, implicit, or
a combination of both A teacher might comment
as explicitly as “I’m interested in your idea here,”
“I like your voice in this paragraph,” or “I think
this sentence needs a verb.” Teachers might also
engage indirectly, such as “What do you think this
paragraph lacks?” or “I’m lost here!” Reflective
response might also be used, such as “I’m just
curious to see what is happening here,” or “as a
reader, I like to see more details in this scene.”
In this study, we attempted to explore the effects
of reflective response on student revision as defined
by Anson (Anson, 1989) The study was a pilot
study for a future research with greater sample We
examined 15 papers, including 30 drafts produced
by three college students who studied English as
a second language over a period of two academic
semesters (24 weeks) These papers were written as
an additional writing exercise, out of the students’
normal class time, and not for credit or grading No
pressure was placed on the students with regard to
what they wrote, when they wrote, and where By
doing this, we intended to give more freedom to
the students, and avoid imposing the concepts of
teacherly “ideal text” on the students (Sommers,
1982) The students would revise their drafts only
because they wanted to do so, not because of
meeting any requirements by the teacher for the
purpose of grading
The effects of reflective response were analyzed
using a rating scale developed by Ferris (1997) We
assessed if the students’ subsequent revisions were
the result of the teacher response, and if the changes
in drafts improved the overall writing quality as evaluated using a version of the National Writing Project’s analytical writing continuum (NWP, 2009) Improvement in a student’s paper was determined by two procedures: (a) holistic scoring
of the first and final drafts on a six-point scale, and (b) analytical scoring centered on six traits: content, structure, stance, sentence fluency, word choice, and conventions
2 REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE 2.1 L1 response research and theory
Written teacher response has been a topic drawing concern from a large number of researchers and educators, resulting in a growing body of research in the field As early as 1913, Walter Barnes wrote:
I believe that children in the grades live, so far as the composition work is concerned, in an absolute monarchy, in which they are the subjects, the teacher the king (more often, the queen), and the red-ink pen the royal scepter In our efforts to train our children, we turn martinets and discipline the recruits into a company of stupid, stolid soldierkins- prompt to obey orders, it may be, but utterly devoid
of initiative (Barnes, 1913, pp 158-159)
Similarly, a teacher who emphasizes mechanical errors, or “[a teacher] ferrets out the buried grammatical blunder, who scents from afar
a colloquialism or a bit of slang” (Barnes, 1913) was not an effective composition teacher, to use the words by A Lunsford & Connors (1993)
Research in written teacher response was blooming during the 1970s when there was a shift from focusing on a final, polished paper submitted for grade to emphasizing the multiple draft process
A number of studies have addressed the issue
of whether teacher response is supportive to the improvement of student writing (e.g Anson, 1989; Connors & Lunsford, 1988; Freedman et al., 1987; Knoblauch & Brannon, 1981; A A Lunsford &
Trang 3Lunsford, 2008; A Lunsford & Connors, 1993;
R Lunsford & Straub, 1995, 2006; Moxley, 1989;
Sperling & Freedman, 1987; Straub, 2000) among
many others Though written comment was the most
widely used method, also the most time-consuming
(Sommers, 1982), the influence of written teacher
response on student writing improvement is still
controversial Earlier researchers showed their
skeptical view on the effectiveness of teacher
response while more recent researchers have
expressed milder, more balanced arguments over
the influence of written teacher response on student
writing revision and quality (Bitchener & Ferris,
2012; Ferris, 2003, 2004)
2.2 Earlier skepticism
Researchers (such as Hairston, 1986;
Knoblauch & Brannon, 1981; Sommers, 1982;
Sperling & Freedman, 1987) tended to draw
a bleak picture of the effectiveness of written
response to the improvement of student drafts For
example, in Knoblauch & Brannon’s (1981) review,
teacher comments showed minimum influence on
student writing, students failed to interpret and
handle teacher responses, and even if the students
understood the feedback, their paper was not better
Sommers (1982) reported that “teachers’
comments can take students’ attention away from
their own purposes in writing a particular text
and focus that attention on the teachers’ purpose
in commenting” (p 149) Students made changes
in their paper in the way the teacher wanted, not
what they thought was needed Teacher responses
focused more on errors than on idea development,
and teachers did not prioritize errors to be fixed
Sommers also observed that “teachers’ comments
are not text-specific and could be interchanged,
rubber-stamped, from text to text” (p 152) Teacher
response tended to be generic, which included
vague directives and abstract commands Brannon
& Knoblauch (1981) reported that students revise
their drafts to meet their teacher’s expectation,
not because of their need for idea development
Teacher response was believed to be authoritative and imposing, which emphasized logical, rational arguments, rather than being reflective and clear More importantly, written response was even reported to be unsupportive and even harmful to both teachers and students (Hairston, 1986; Sperling & Freedman, 1987) Hairston believed that responding may leave negative effects on teachers (such as frustration, burn-out, and despair) and on students (cognitive overload, defensive barriers that resist teacher comment) Sperling & Freeman (1987), in a case study with a high school student, reported that response was not supportive to student revision, and that the student misinterpreted the teacher’s message The student seemed to ignore problems pointed out in the comments by the teacher These observations are echoed by Wilson who reported that students receptively accepted the comments, and made changes to satisfy the teacher, to have good marks, which damaged and demotivated students’ view of what writing means (Wilson, 2009) Sperling & Freeman, therefore, called for clearer, more careful, well-constructed, helpful, relevant feedback from teachers in responding to student drafts
2.3 More recent balanced perspective on response
A milder, more balanced view in judging teacher’s written feedback and student revision was noticed in recent studies (i.e Anson, 1989; Beason, 1993; Crone-Blevins, 2002; Freedman et al., 1987;
A Lunsford & Connors, 1993; R Lunsford & Straub, 1995; Mathison-Fife & O’Neill, 1997; Smith, 1997; Sperling, 1994, 1996; Straub, 1997) These researchers attempt to construct an analytical framework in examining teacher comments and the influence on student writing
Freedman, et al., (1987) conducted an extensive ethnographic study (surveying 715 junior high school students, 560 teachers from 116 National Writing Project sites) and reported that response during writing processes is significantly more
Trang 4helpful than response to final polished products
Teacher response is preferred over peer, parent,
or other adult response But when grading was
involved, teacher feedback was not helpful on the
final piece submitted for grading
In a series of studies, Sperling (1994,
1996) proposed that in order to reach a deeper
understanding of student writing in the context
of school, teachers should have in mind five
orientations when responding to student writing: i)
interpretive (relating elements in students’ writing
to teachers’ prior knowledge and experience or
to students’ prior knowledge and experience); ii)
social (playing different social roles in reading
students’ papers, such as peer and literacy scholar,
teacher, and aesthetic reader); iii) cognitive/
emotive (reflecting reasoning and emotions as
teachers read students’ papers); iv) evaluative
(critically assessing students’ writing, explicitly and
implicitly, opening chances for extensive criticism
on students’ writing); and v) pedagogical (treating
students’ papers as teaching and learning tools)
(Sperling, 1996, pp 23, 24) These orientations
form an analytical framework for investigating the
perspective of teacher-as-reader in responding to
student writing Having questions, relating to prior
knowledge and experience, playing multiple roles
in reading a paper, and sharing these hypotheses
with students helps students understand themselves
better as writer and reader The framework might
serve as a holistic approach to investigating student
writing in classroom context where teacher response
is valued
In their landmark research, Straub & Lunsford
(1995; 2006) investigated 3,500 comments by 12
experienced teachers and professors of English on
156 sets of responses The researchers examined
written teacher comments by analyzing the “focus”
and “mode” both quantitatively and qualitatively
Focus is understood as the issue to which the
comment refers while the mode refers to how the
comment is shaped
Figure 1: Categories for analyzing comments
(R Lunsford & Straub, 1995, p 159)
FOCUS Global
Ideas Development Global structure
Local
Local structure Wording Correctness
Extra-textual
MODE
Corrections Evaluations
Evaluations Imperatives Advice Praise Indirect Requests Problem-Posing Questions Heuristic Questions Reflective Statements
Straub & Lunsford reported that most of the teachers’ comments were text-specific, focused on global issues The comments were framed in a non-authoritative mode and supported writing as a process Anson (1989) attempted to examine responding styles and their relationship with thinking styles The researcher categorized written teacher response styles into three groups of dualistic, relativistic, and reflective Dualistic responders tend to focus their attention on surface errors and mechanics Teacher responders clearly prescribed what is right from what is wrong, and that students should make changes in their revision “The tone of the responses implied that there were standards for correct and incorrect ways to complete the assignment, and that
a teacher’s job was to act as a judge by applying the standards to the student’s writing,” or “[the tone] was highly authoritative and teacherly” (Anson,
1989, pp 344, 348) Grammatical issues seem to be the focus of dualistic comments Dualistic response emphasized narrowly prescriptive comments (Straub & Lunsford, 1995) Dualistic response tends to focus on spelling out issues, not to offer options for revision The following example is a typical dualistic response:
There are some serious problems with this paper For one thing it is far too short, and the ideas
in it, if any, are at the moment barely articulated…
Trang 5one obvious reason why you did not write more,
is that you have very serious deficiencies in your
knowledge of the mechanics of writing I am
referring here to tense, spelling, punctuation, and
sentence structure (Anson, 1989, p 344)
The second type of responders, relativistic,
commented almost nothing They wrote minimum
comments on the margins of student papers as well as
in the summary statements Relativistic responders
seemed to avoid focusing on the student’s text,
and to be “entirely unconcerned with giving the
students anything more than a casual reaction…
the text seems ‘owned’ by the writer” and teachers
did not want to intrude into the text Relativistic
responder provides “no options for revision,” just
“idiosyncratic response of a single reader” (Anson,
1989, pp 349-350)
The third approach examined was reflective
response Reflective responders tend to make
suggestions and possibilities for future revision
This type of comment expresses concerns for
student writers in “ideas, textual decisions,
personal reactions.” Reflective responders acted
as “representative readers” of student text, not
authoritative teachers Final choices of whether or
not making any changes to the drafts will be decided
by the students themselves Reflective response also
implies that the student writing was “in-process
drafts” which serves as “tools for further learning.”
Reflective responders often phase “maybe you could
think about…”, “what if you…”, “and how about
seeing if there’s a way to…” The tone of reflective
response tended to be collaborating, suggesting,
guiding, and modeling The reflective responder
seems to be “rhetorically sitting next to the writer”
(Anson, 1989, pp 351, 353) Below is an example
of a reflective commentary to the student’s writing:
Hi Bobby The first thing that strikes me before
I even read your story is that it’s very short… I’m
wondering if it’s short for a good reason, or it’s
short because you just couldn’t think of things to
say It’s possible for a piece of writing that’s very
short to be very good Poetry is that way, certainly
On the other hand, the more you put in, the more chances are that your reader is going to be able to get into your story Stories generally- and this essay
is a story- are fairly well-detailed… if you just keep
it short and don’t put in many details then we never really get into your story at all (Anson, 1989, p 351) Reflective responses tend to “place more responsibility on the writer … not just in the style or form of the response, but in its focus and content.”
By challenging the students to rethink their essays, reflective response appeared to “challenge the students to rethink their ways of viewing the world” (Anson, 1989, p 352)
2.4 L2 written feedback research
Research in L2 written feedback has been growing, with attention being paid to the effectiveness of teacher’s written comments to student writing and in the ways feedback is given (e.g., Ashwell, 2000; Bitchener, 2008; Bitchener
& Ferris, 2012; Bruton, 2009a, 2009b, 2010; Chandler, 2003; Conrad & Goldstein, 1999; Fathman & Whalley, 1990; Ferris, 1995b, 1997,
2001, 2003, 2004; Ferris, 2010; Ferris, Brown, Liu,
& Stine, 2011; Ferris, Pezone, Tade, & Tinti, 1997; Guénette, 2007; Hartshorn et al., 2010; F Hyland
& Hyland, 2001; K Hyland & Hyland, 2006; Leki, 1990; Storch & Wigglesworth, 2010; Truscott,
1996, 1999, 2007; Van Beuningen, De Jong, & Kuiken, 2012; Zamel, 1985) Earlier L2 written feedback research yielded similar findings to L1 research Teacher comments were reported to be vague and form-related They focused on language errors rather than on global issues such as ideas and organization (Zamel, 1985)
Research in the 1990s tended to focus on what
to respond to (either on form, content, or both), and reported mixed findings Focus on form was believed to be helpful for student writing (Ashwell, 2000; Chandler, 2003; Cohen & Cavalcanti, 1990; Fathman & Whalley, 1990; Ferris, 1997; Leki, 1990) In an empirical study with 72 college
Trang 6students from mixed backgrounds, Fathman &
Whalley (1990) reported that specific comments
on grammatical errors have greater effect on the
improvement of grammatical accuracy than general
comments on content do The researchers also
noted that both grammar and content response
might be provided either separately or at the same
time “without overburdening the students” (p 187)
This claim was further supported by later studies
(e.g Ashwell, 2000; Ferris, 1997) Feedback on
some selective patterns of errors was helpful to
student writing (Ferris, 1995b) Chandler (2003)
reported, for example, that error correction helped
students gain greater accuracy than when they did
not receive error feedback Form-related comments
(on grammatical errors) led to better grammatical
accuracy than content-related feedback did (Fathman
& Whalley, 1990; Ferris & Roberts, 2001) Error
correction helped prevent error fossilization (i.e a
tendency to resist to change errors so that the errors
become fixed) in L2 learners (Higgs & Clifford,
1982; Lalande, 1982)
However, earlier studies in L2 written feedback
also revealed that error correction was ineffective,
even harmful to students’ fluency, and led to no
improvement in long-term progress (Fazio, 2001;
Kepner, 1991; Polio, Fleck, & Leder, 1998; Robb,
Ross, & Shortreed, 1986; Semke, 1984; Sheppard,
1992; Truscott, 1996) Truscott (1996), for
example, claimed that error correction was harmful
to student fluency and led to no improvement in
long-term progress and that students might not gain
anything from error feedback Zamel (1985) and
Lunsford and Connors (1993) reported that teacher
feedback was often vague, form-related, and
inaccurate Truscott (1999) suggested that teachers
should adopt a correction-free approach in teaching
writing, and teachers should focus on extra writing
practice rather than spending time handling errors
In recent reviews, Ferris summarizes a number
of issues in response research: i) teachers often rely
on marginal or end of paper notes whose purpose is
to request, suggest, give information, encourage, and
provide positive feedback A number of techniques have been utilized to respond: questioning, making statements and imperatives, recommending, etc., ii) teachers adjust their responses to types of writing task and student writing proficiency; and iii) some response styles tend to be more effective to revision than the others Comments about information, grammar, or mechanics are more likely to lead to successful revision than comments about such issue
as thinking or argumentation (Bitchener & Ferris, 2012; Ferris, 2003)
One of the main concerns in L2 response scholarship is how to determine if teacher response affects student revision Several taxonomies have been developed to trace revision changes Faigley
& Witte (1981) proposed a system that traces revision by classifying changes into surface changes (changes that do not result in new information) and text-based changes (changes that lead to new content or deletion of old content) (Faigley & Witte, 1981) Storch (2010) and Ferris (2003) argues that this revision scheme tends to be misleading because i) students tend to make by far greater number of surface formal changes than text-based changes within a writing, and ii) the scheme does not deal with how such a change affects the general quality
of the draft
Another procedure monitoring teacher response and student revision is proposed by Ferris (1997) This rating scale traced the students’ drafts and the teacher’s response to see how students utilized the comments in their revision Students’ revision
was coded as not revised, successful revision, and
unsuccessful revision These changes were also
determined if they improve quality of the paper,
have mixed effects, or have negative effect This
method “more directly addresses the influence of teacher feedback and its effects not only on the types of revisions students make but on whether those changes actually improve the quality of the students’ texts” (Ferris, 2003, p 36) A number of studies have applied this analytic model in working with teacher’s comments and the effect on student’s
Trang 7revision (i.e Conrad & Goldstein, 1999; Ferris,
1997, 2001; F Hyland, 1998)
Many researchers, such as Bitchener and Ferris
(2012), Storch (2010), Guénette (2007); K Hyland
and Hyland (2006), and Ferris (2003, 2004),
suggests that future studies in L2 response should
consider student background and motivation level
for L2 learning These include the amount of time
students commit to spend on writing (in-class and
out-of-class) The relationship between students and
teacher should also be noted The types of writing
student compose, the ways teacher constructs
responses (linguistic, pragmatic, etc.) might also
count in the relationship between response and
revision Whether or not teacher’s written feedback
is harmful to student’s writing as Truscott (1996,
1999) claims or whether teacher’s feedback is
helpful to students’ immediate revision are also
issues that merit further explorations
There has been a debate about whether or
not teacher’s written feedback is helpful to
non-native students of English (e.g., Chandler, 2003;
Ferris, 1997, 1999, 2004, 2011; Ferris, 2006; A
Lunsford & Connors, 1993; Truscott, 1996, 1999,
2007; Zamel, 1985) Among many types of written
feedback, the current study only explores only one
type, written reflective feedback, and to examine
if written reflective response has any effect on
ESL students’ revision Given the fact that written
feedback is still the most widely adopted method
by writing teachers and is time consuming and
yet appropriately examined, it is necessary to
investigate whether or not teachers’ feedback make
a difference to students’ writing progress The study
was designed to answer the two following research
questions:
1 To what extent does teacher’s written
reflective response influence ESL learners’ revision
process?
2 To what extent does ESL students’ revised
draft improve after receiving teacher’s written
reflective response?
3 THE STUDY 3.1 The participants
The study was conducted on three female college students They were Vietnamese first year students (mean age is 20) They were pursuing different degrees in different majors, at different universities For the purpose of ethics, their names are coded as Queen, Pie and Tea Queen was studying English and commerce in Singapore; Pie was following a business program at a university
in Wellington, New Zealand; and Tea was studying finance in Russia
The length of the participants’ experience with English varies Queen has been learning English since she was at her secondary school in Vietnam (for about seven years) and she is now learning English in Singapore Pie and Tea have acquired Russian as their second language Pie learned Russian for six years before switching to English when she began her business program in Wellington in 2009 By the time data for the study was collected, Pie has been learning English in New Zealand for roughly a year Tea, interestingly, still used Russian as a means for her accounting program since Russian was a language of instruction at her university Tea, however, wanted to learn English since she was considering a Master’s degree in an English speaking university By the date of the data collection process, Tea had been learning English for almost two years To fully examine the effect
of teachers’ responses (if any), it is appropriate to select the participants with diverse backgrounds of English learning
All of the participants were former students
at the universities in Vietnam where two of the researchers used to teach but were not current students at the time of this study Following the university’s approval, an email was sent out to recruit the participants These three students were the ones who agreed to join the study They were female students who appeared to have a clear commitment and plan to their studies, which might give credit to their motivation in learning English All of them were eager to participate in the study
Trang 8since it offered them opportunities to be exposed
to English, to practice writing in English, and to
receive feedback from the researchers
3.2 Data collection process
The data for the current study (the students’
series of drafts and final version) were collected over
a period of two academic semesters (24 weeks) All
of the writing was done outside of school, not for
credit or grading It was made explicit before the
participants joined the project that there would be
no rules on how the writing had to be done, with
no time constraints It was also up to the students’
interests and personal habits to decide when, where,
and what to write We provided the students with
some writing prompts if they did not wish to
self-select topics/themes to write about In fact, most of
the writings came from these students’ self-selected
topics Only two teacher-provided writing prompts
were used
The participants wrote multiple drafts After
finishing each draft, they sent the teacher researcher
for comments Since the focus of the study was
on reflective feedback, the researcher interacted
reflectively with these students’ drafts by writing
exploratory comments at the end of each draft The
researcher then returned the students the drafts with
comments The students studied the comments and
decided one their own what to do with the draft
They would continue to revise and edit their draft,
which again would be sent to the researcher; or the
student may refuse to revise and stop writing about
that topic If the students chose to revise their drafts,
they would revise it and send the revised paper to the teacher until the students were satisfied with the final draft
Most of the drafts were written over two weeks Some topics resulted in up to four drafts plus the final version Seven topics/themes per student were collected during this period, yet only five of the papers per student were selected for analysis This was because the students chose not to revise the other two topics for some reason In total, 15 papers with more than 30 drafts were collected for analysis over a period of 24 weeks
3.3 Analysis of the effect of written feedback
on revision
Since the study attempted to see how the teacher’s reflective feedback affects the students’ revision, Ferris’s (1997) analytic model was used
to analyze the revision A number of L2 feedback studies have adopted this procedure (i.e Conrad
& Goldstein, 1999; Ferris, 1997, 2001; F Hyland, 1998) The procedure cross-checked the student’s drafts and teacher’s response to see to what extent the revision was successful, following the comment According to this scheme, three main categories
were coded in analyzing student drafts: not revised,
successful revision, and unsuccessful revision
These categories were further examined to see to
if the changes were minimal or substantive, and if they generally have positive effect, mixed effect, or negative effect A rating scale was adopted to aid the coding process (Figure 2)
Figure 2: Rating scale for revision (Ferris, 1997, p 322)
Trang 9Figure 3 below described how the coding procedure worked in tracing the influence of the teacher’s feedback on the students’ writing across the drafts:
Figure 3: Analysis of effects of teacher’s feedback on drafts
Earlier Draft Teacher’s Feedback Later Draft feedback How the
worked
My first day at
the school, I had
a placement test
which took me
about two hours
with other students
I did my test not
well because my
basic English
knowledge was
very bad After
that, a manager
called Simon
introduced us about
regulation’s school
and campus tour
Sometimes when
the manager was
taking I did not
understand, but he
tried to explain for
me what did he say
When I felt nervous
he helped me more
confident I thought
he is not also a good
manager but only is
a devoted teacher
After finished
introduction, we
went to student
service centre to
made student cards
which we helped us
can use computer
rooms and borrow
books from library
Then we got home
and to prepared for
the first day at class
Queen, this is a clear essay about a good topic It seems that you are right on track to descriptive writing
As a general reader, I can see
a few of your activities on the first day at the university
This is about your first day,
a difficult day, at a foreign strange university You therefore should describe it more specifically, add more details to help readers see how difficult you felt on that day For example, you could write more on (1) your feelings on the way to the university, (2) what you saw
at the university (students, buildings, anything you thought it’s strange!) (3) who took you there or you went there yourself? (4) what you felt when you saw the placement tests and how you did it, any special strategies? If you could remember, give one example
in the test that you think it’s tricky (5) how the manager helped you to understand all the instructions and rules and regulations? How you thought of him/her before and after his/her orientation?
(6) after the orientation, you went to make the student ID
Tell me more about it and the process of ID issuing in
a Singapore university
The first day I went to school, I got
up at seven o’clock and had breakfast
After that, I went to school by bus at eight o’clock When I was coming to the school, I saw a beautiful campus appeared in front of my eyes (2)
My first day at the school, I had a placement test which took me about two hours with other students I did my test not well because my basic English knowledge was very bad I thought “if
I want study at university in Singapore
I must study very hard” (4) Then, a manager called Simon introduced us about regulation’s school and campus tour Sometimes when the manager was taking I did not understand, but he tried to explain for me what he said He used easier words to explain his ideas (5) When I felt nervous he helped me more confident I thought he is not also
a good manager but only is a devoted teacher
After finished introduction, we went to student service centre to made student cards which we helped us can use computer rooms and borrow books from library I began take photos for it
After the staff gave me an ID number and I waited she gave me my student card I had to pay ten dollars for it
Before I went home other students and
I came to computer room and library
In the library did not have lots of books because this was a new school
It established in 2008, so it had little students After that, we went to canteen
to drink some things (6) Then we got home and to prepared for the first day
at class I hoped the first day at class would be a good day for us
(1) fail to revise
(2) revise successfully with minimal change (3) fail to revise (4) revise successfully with minimal change
(5) revise successfully with minimal change
(6) revise successfully with substantive change
Trang 10The coding procedure framework was based
on Ferris (1997) All recommendations from the
teacher’s comments were first identified We then
located these recommendations in the final drafts
before we determined whether or not the students
used these suggestions to make changes to their
final drafts We further assessed if the changes were
minimal or substantive Finally, we determined if
the changes led to successful revision
Two independent raters were recruited to do the
coding These raters have been teaching English for
ten years and hold their Ph.D in English education
and M.A in TESOL They were carefully trained
with clear demonstrations before their actual coding
The inter-rater reliability correlation between the
two raters was 85
3.4 Assessing the improvement of the student
writing
In an attempt to qualitatively measure possible
improvement in student writing, eight experienced
English instructors were recruited to analyze the
first drafts and final drafts Two out of eight raters
hold an M.A degree in TESOL; four hold M.A
in English Education, and two Ph.Ds Before the
actual scoring, a demonstration scoring session
was designed to familiarize the scorers with the
process and address possible issues arising from
the scoring process These raters examined the first
and final drafts and scored the papers based on a
version of the NWP’s analytic writing continuum
(NWP, 2009) Improvement in a student’s paper
was determined following two main procedures:
i) holistic scoring of the first and final draft on a
six- point scale; and ii) analytical scoring based on
a six-trait scoring guide
3.4.1 Holistic scoring
Before each scoring session, all identifying
information was removed so that the raters did not
know which draft was the first draft and which draft
was the final draft Each pair of the papers (the
first and final draft) went through two independent
readings by two different raters, which resulted
in two independent sets of scores If there was
an obvious discrepancy in the scores (equal or greater than two points) after the two readings, a third independent reading was required The final score for that paper was the average of the three independent readings
3.4.2 Analytical scoring
After the holistic scoring, the raters analyzed each draft in detail The analysis centered on the following traits (NWP, 2009): (i) Content (including quality and clarity of ideas and meaning); (ii) Structure (organization of the paper); (iii) Stance (including tone, voice, and style); (iv) Sentence fluency (sentence structure, sentence flow and rhythm, clarity of sentences); (v) Diction (word use, range of vocabulary, expressions); and (vi) Conventions (spelling, punctuation, capitalization, paragraph breaks)
4 FINDINGS 4.1 Teacher’s written reflective feedback did influence student revision
Analysis of the student drafts showed that teacher’s written reflective comments did help improve the student revision The students in the study mostly utilized the teacher’s written comments and most of the comments led to successful revision The students only ignored a small percentage of the teacher’s comments
Graph 1 shows the percentages of the six categories of the rating scale for revision among the drafts Based on the Ferris’s (1997) procedure, most of the teacher’s comments led to successful revision The students utilized about 67 percent
of the suggestions and recommendations by the teacher Among this, 33% of the comments resulted
in minor revision with positive effects on final drafts, and nearly 34% of the comments led to substantial revision with positive effects on the final drafts Only about a third of the suggestions in teacher responses led to no revision or revision with negative effects in final drafts Among these categories, the students ignored about 16% of the teacher’s comments, and about 15% yielded negative or mixed effects