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VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI University of LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL studies FACULTY of postgraduate studies Trịnh Thị Thanh Xuân PEER- FEEDBACK IN IMPROVING WRITING SKILLS: PERCEPTIONS OF TEACHERS AND SECOND-YEAR NONENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT HANOI UNIVERSITY OF BUSINESS AND TECHNOLOGY Ng-êi học chữa cho ng-ời học phát triển kỹ viết: Nhận thức giáo viên sinh viên năm thứ hai không chuyên tiếng Anh tr-ờng Đại học Kinh Doanh Công Nghệ Hà Nội MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS FIELD: METHODOLOGY CODE: 601410 Course: K16 SUPERVISOR: Vị THóY QUúNH, M.A HANOI - 2010 iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgement i Abstract ii Declaration iii Lists of tables, figures and appendices iv CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 The rationale of the study 1.2 Aims of the study and research questions 1.3 Scope of the study 1.4 Significance of the study 1.5 Methods of the study 1.6 Organization of the thesis CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Definitions of feedback to students’ writing 2.2 Types of feedback to students’ writing 2.3 Advantages and disadvantages of doing peer written feedback in the teaching and learning of writing 2.4 Guiding principles for effective peer written feedback 11 2.5 Summary 14 CHAPTER 3: THE METHODOLOGY 3.1 The current situation of teaching and learning writing at HUBT 15 3.2 The participants 15 3.3 Instruments 16 3.4 Data collection procedure 18 3.5 Data analysis procedure 19 3.6 Summary 19 CHAPTER 4: DATA PRESENTATION AND DISCUSSION 4.1 Teachers’ perception on students’ written feedback 20 4.1.1 Teachers’ perception on the advantage of students’ written feedback 21 v 4.1.2 Teachers’ perception on the disadvantage of students’ written feedback 4.2 Students’ perception on peer written feedback 22 24 4.2.1 Students’ perceived difficulties in indicating the mistakes in their peers’ writing 25 4.2.2 Students’ perceived difficulties in providing suggestions for the mistakes in their peers’ writing 29 4.2.3 Students’ perception on the advantage of peer written feedback 34 4.2.4 Students’ perception on the disadvantage of students’ written feedback 4.3 Improvement of students’ writing after receiving peer written feedback 36 37 4.4 Implications of using peer written feedback in improving teaching and learning writing skill 4.5 Summary 40 41 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION 5.1 Summary 42 5.2 Limitations of the study 43 5.3 Suggestions for further studies 43 References Appendices vi LISTS OF TABLES Table 1: Students’ perceived difficulties in indicating the mistakes in their peers’ writings 25 Table 2: Students’ perceived difficulties in providing suggestions for the mistakes indicated in their peers’ writings 30 Table 3: Students’ improvement in grammar and vocabulary after receiving peer written feedback 39 Table 4: Students’ improvement in grammar after receiving peer written feedback 40 Table 5: Students’ improvement in vocabulary after receiving peer written feedback 41 LISTS OF FIGURES Figure 1: Teachers' perception on students’ written feedback 20 Figure 2: Teachers’ perception on the advantage of students’ written feedback 21 Figure3: Teachers’ perception on the disadvantage of students’ written feedback 22 Figure 4: Students’ perception on peer written feedback 24 Figure 5: Students’ perception on the advantage of peer written feedback 34 Figure 6: Students’ perception on the disadvantage of peer written feedback 36 LISTS OF APPENDICES Appendix 1: Survey questionnaire I Appendix 2: Checklists V Appendix 3: Symbols for correcting mistakes VI CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 The rationale of the study Nowadays, English is considered to be one of the key factors that help our country make faster progress on the way of industrialization, modernization and integrate into the world Therefore, the demand to master English, that is to use the four language skills fluently, is becoming essential to students in general and students at Hanoi University of Business and Technology (HUBT) in particular Of the four language skills, writing seems to be the most difficult but really important skill among the other three: listening, reading, and speaking, because it is especially necessary for students to acquire English for Specific Purpose (ESP) lessons in their academic program Thus, one of the vital responsibilities of English teachers is to help students enhance their writing skills With the effort to help students improve their writing skills, peer feedback is employed in the writing classes at HUBT The use of peer feedback especially peer written feedback can be regarded as one of the most significant applications in the writing classes Feedback plays a very crucial role in motivating further learning as it informs learners about their level of English proficiency or their needs for improvement Brown (1994) considers feedback as one of the keys to successful learning Chiu (2008), Zhang (2008), Min (2006) and Paulus (1999) have also proved that feedback constitutes an important aspect of fostering the improvement of writing Paulus (1999) has found that peer feedback helps students discover whether they communicate successfully and encourages them to revise to improve their texts Moreover, peer feedback is also regarded as a powerful way in improving critical thinking and evaluation of the real audience rather than the traditional teachers’ responses (Berg, 1999, Hyland, 2003, Topping, 1998, cited in Chiu, 2008) Furthermore, peer written feedback can reduce the heavy workload of marking for teachers when students get used to with this activity However, still there has not much concern about this activity among teachers at HUBT There have been some studies on giving feedback on writing, but they mainly focus on the ways teachers provide feedback Moreover, the assessment of progress made by students in writing after receiving peer written feedback seems not to be highlighted Thus, a study on “Peerfeedback in improving writing skills: Perceptions of teachers and second-year non-English major students at Hanoi University of Business and Technology” should be carried on 1.2 Aims of the study and research questions This research is designed to investigate teachers and students’ perceptions on peer feedback in improving writing skills at Hanoi University of Business and Technology The aims of the study are to find out teachers’ and students’ perceptions of written feedback provided by peer students on their writings and the improvement of students’ writing after receiving peer written feedback The thesis also hope to propose some implications for the teaching and learning writing using peer written feedback and provide some suggestions for the further studies To gain these aims, the research questions are as follows: What are teachers’ perceptions on students’ written feedback? What are students’ perceptions on peer written feedback? How students improve their writings after receiving peer written feedback? 1.3 Scope of the study In practice, students can provide peer feedback in both oral and written forms on their peer writings However, within the framework of this minor thesis, the study only focuses on the peer written feedback in writing paragraph among second year non-major English students at Hanoi University of Business and Technology 1.4 Significance of the study Theoretically, the study proves that peer written feedback is very important to the teaching and learning of writing Peer written feedback has a number of advantages Peer written feedback is considered to give both readers and writers more chances for collaboration, consideration and reflection than oral negotiation Practically, the study indicates that using peer written feedback not only reduces the marking load of teachers but also improves students’ learning efficiency in writing And when students spend time reading their peers’ writings, they may become more critical readers and efficient writers 1.5 Methods of the study In order to obtain adequate information for the study, two methods- document analysis and survey- were used First, 100 students’ first drafts were analyzed to find out how students provide written feedback to their peers’ writings; then these drafts were compared to the second ones to see whether the peer written feedback helps students improve their writings Second, the survey questionnaire was done on 100 students and 30 teachers to find out their perceptions on students’ written feedback in the improvement of writing skills 1.6 Organization of the study The thesis consists of five chapters as follows: Chapter 1- Introduction- briefly presents the rationale, the aims, research questions, scope as well as the significance and organization of the study Chapter 2- Literature review- discusses the literature related to the feedback in writing, types of feedback to students’ writing, advantages and disadvantages of doing peer written feedback in the teaching and learning of writing as well as the guiding principles for effective peer written feedback Chapter 3- The methodology- describes the current situation of the teaching and learning writing at HUBT and the methodology dealing with the participants, instrumentation, data collection procedure and data analysis procedure Chapter 4- Data Presentation and Discussion- analyzes and discusses the data then draws the implications for the teaching and learning of writing using peer written feedback Chapter 5- Conclusion- summarizes the main findings of the study, states its limitations and offers suggestions for further study CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Definitions of peer feedback The term “feedback” has been defined in various ways, among which the one by Liu and Hansen (2002) is one of the most comprehensive Liu and Hansen considers feedback as “the use of learners as sources of information and interactants for each in such a way that learners assume roles and responsibilities normally taken on by formally trained teacher, tutor, or editor in commenting on and critiquing each other’s drafts in both written and oral formats in the process in the process of writing” (p.75) Simply stated, peer feedback in writing involves sharing one’s writing with a group of peer readers who offer feedback and suggestions for improvement Due to the great effect of peer feedback on students’ revision in particular and on students’ writing skill in general, teachers have increasingly required their students’ responsibility for not only their own writings but also for those of their peers According to Keh, feedback is “any input from a reader to a writer with the effect of proving the information to the writer for revision” (1990, p.294) In other words, after reading the others’ writing, the reader gives comments, questions and suggestions with a purpose to help him/her revise the writing Second language writing research (Hedgcock and Lefkowitz, 1992 and Paulus, 1990) has found that peer feedback comments can lead to meaningful revisions, and that compared with the teacher feedback, revisions based on peer comment can be better in vocabulary, organization and content Moreover, peer feedback was considered a necessary component in the process writing approach As Raimes notes, “response to students’ writing is very much a part of the process of teaching writing” (1983, p.139) If students write only one draft which is then graded by the teacher, feedback on what is wrong in the composition comes too late Therefore, feedback should be provided in the process of writing That means feedback is crucial for the success of the writing task 2.2 Types of feedback to students’ writing Feedback to students’ writing consists of three major types These types to writing texts are: teacher’s feedback, self-assessment and peer feedback 2.2.1 Teacher’s feedback It is no doubt that teacher written feedback “can not be ignored” in teaching and learning writing However, concerning the matter of teacher’s written feedback, there exists a huge number of unfavorably understanding so far It raises the question of whether teacher’ kind of correction and comment match students’ expectations (Murphy, 1994) or still presents a mismatch (Charles, 1990) A factor that possibly leads to the failure of the teachers’ feedback is the mismatch between students and teachers’ preferences for comments Cohen (1987) and Cohen and Cavalcanti (1990) reported that students preferred to receive more feedback on content but were getting more feedback on grammar and mechanics To improve the quality of feedback, teachers must decide whether to focus on form (e.g., grammar, vocabulary, mechanics) or on content (e.g., organization and amount of detail) And studies from different language researchers indicate that learners’ writing skills may improve with teacher feedback that focuses on content rather than on form Some researchers have been exploring strategies that can enhance the effectiveness of teachers’ comment Connor and Farmer (1990) proposed that students should involve in analyzing certain characteristic of their own text This will enable students to evaluate their own writing and can lead to high success rate 2.2.2 Self-assessment Self-assessment has been given much attention in recent years owning to a growing emphasis on learner autonomy and their significant pedagogic value Wei and Chen (2004) state that 38 correction Consequently, there was very little improvement in paragraph organization of the second drafts in compared to the first ones Another reason for this was that when giving feedback, most students did not succeed in suggesting the way to improve them As a result, students after receiving their peer’ feedback did not know what to to improve their paragraph organization Actually, students often gave feedback as follows and this kind of feedback is not useful: “The paragraph is not coherent” “The supporting ideas not support the topic sentence” “There is no topic sentence in the paragraph” “The conclusion is not suitable” The next areas looked into to find out how students’ writings are improved were grammar and vocabulary The comparison between students’ first drafts and their second ones rewritten using the peer feedback was done However, the researcher only focused on the mistakes indicated in the first drafts and how they were corrected in the second ones Aspects The number of mistakes The number of mistakes were changed indicated in the first drafts correctly in the second drafts Grammar 397 203 Vocabulary 81 49 Table 3: Students’ improvement in grammar and vocabulary after receiving peer written feedback As can be seen in table 3, 397 was the number of mistakes made by students in their first drafts and this number decreased by 49% after these students got feedback from their peers In terms of vocabulary, the number of mistakes decreased from 81 mistakes in version to 49 39 mistakes in version – which counted for about 60% of the number of errors in the first version It can be easily seen that peer written feedback could significantly contribute to make good between-draft changes The two following tables will show clearer figures to prove these good changes Aspects The number of mistakes indicated in the first drafts The use of 168 The number of mistakes were changed correctly in the second drafts 83 verbs Articles 85 43 Prepositions 78 39 Punctuation 66 38 Table 4: Students’ improvement in grammar after receiving peer written feedback In terms of grammar, table shows that of the 397 indicated mistakes, 203 mistakes (51%) were changed correctly in the second drafts It can be easily realized that the percentage of punctuation mistakes changed correctly in the second drafts is the biggest (57%) Meanwhile, the percentage of mistakes regarding to the use of articles and prepositions that were changed correctly were the same (50%) Mistakes related to the use of verbs changed correctly in the second drafts were at the lowest percentage (49%) This result shows that thanks to their friends’ correction and suggestions, students could make real progress in their writings In terms of vocabulary, the number of mistakes changed correctly in the second drafts was higher than that of grammatical mistakes (60% compared to 51%) In detail, 27 out of 43 indicated mistakes of word order were changed correctly in the second drafts, which accounts for 63% whereas the percentage of word choice and word form are 58% and 57% respectively This means that students could benefit from peer written feedback by avoiding mistakes regarding to the use of vocabulary in their writings next time 40 Aspects The number of mistakes The number of mistakes were indicated in the first drafts changed correctly in the second drafts Word order 43 27 Word choice 24 14 Word form 14 Table 5: Students’ improvement in vocabulary after receiving peer written feedback 4.4 Implications of using peer written feedback in improving teaching and learning writing skill The findings of the study show that peer written feedback plays a very important role in helping students revise more effectively and improve their writing ability in general Hence, basing on the theoretical and practical practice, some implications for the teaching and learning of writing using peer written feedback more effectively were recommended First and foremost, as we discussed above, students faced a lot of difficulties when giving feedback to their peers’ writings, so teachers should train their students the way to give feedback to a written work Teachers can introduce some basic criteria to evaluate a piece of writing An example is a paragraph checklist which is included in Appendix While introducing this checklist, teachers should explain each criterion specifically and clearly to avoid misunderstanding and ambiguity In this way, students not only know what they should focus when giving comments on others’ writings but also know which aspects they should pay attention to when creating a paragraph Secondly, because the study findings also indicate that many students think their friends’ feedback is too vague or difficult to understand or contradicts their own ideas, teachers should give students time to raise questions about their uncertainties about peer feedback and 41 commentators chance to give full explanation for their comments It is advisable to organize a discussion after peer response activity which might be very valuable to further demonstrate the process of revising more effectively In this way, teachers can pick out some typical writing mistakes and problems and give students chances to give comments and make correction or suggestions on such mistakes Thanks to a communicative and open discussion, teachers can give students a good chance to learn and understand more about each other In addition, teachers can support students during writing periods or break-time by walking around the class so as to check students’ work and to help them find the solution to some problems they cope with while practicing peer feedback Last but not least, most students often pay their attention on the surface mistakes rather than other aspects which is believed not a good feedback since the students tent to face more problems on expressions and words choices Therefore, teachers should provide more support on these areas, but it does not mean to ignore the surface errors In other words, teachers should guide students to focus on serious surface mistakes together with giving comments on more complex matters such as expressions, word choices, or ideas organization 4.5 Summary In this chapter, findings of the instruments (questionnaires and sample analysis) were carefully analyzed and interpreted While the findings from the survey questionnaire showed teachers’ and students’ positive attitudes towards using peer written feedback in their writing classes, the results from student writing analysis helped have a deeper understanding about improvement of students’ writings after receiving their peer written feedback It can be concluded that peer written feedback affected students’ writing ability through changes of different levels in their writing drafts The findings and interpretations in this chapter would be a fundamental source for the researcher to draw up some implications which will be presented in the next chapter 42 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION 5.1 Summary In this study, the major issues concerning students’ peer written feedback have been taken into consideration and examined both theoretically and practically The results of analysis of peer written feedback have revealed that non major English second year students at HUBT still face a lot of difficulties when giving feedback to their peers’ writings in both indicating the mistakes and providing suggestions So they need teachers’ help by providing them with adequate training and practice in carrying out these activities Besides, the findings have also proved some benefits of peer written feedback The peer written feedback helped students improve their grammar and vocabulary whereas the paragraph organization stayed almost unchanged The study has also provided teachers and students’ perception of peer written feedback Most teachers and students shared the same opinion with the statement that peer written feedback was helpful to students’ writings In addition, they also gave the reasons why they thought this kind of feedback was helpful or unhelpful Moreover, the study has also provided some implications for teaching and learning of writing using peer written feedback In the researcher’ opinion, the most important one is that students should be trained carefully how to give peer written feedback and given enough practice It is hoped that the findings of this thesis will help those who want to use peer written feedback more effectively in teaching writing skills at HUBT in particular and other universities in general 43 5.2 Limitations of the study Although the research questions were addressed and the study objectives were achieved, in this study there still exist some limitations Firstly, this study is relatively a small scale one with the questionnaire involvement of 30 teachers and 100 students and 100 writing papers This size of sample could not best represent for the whole students and teachers at HUBT Secondly, this study only covers peer written feedback So it can not exploit all the advantages of the peer feedback such as oral feedback to help students revise their writings better Limitations are unavoidable when conducting the study; the author hopes that this study will make a contribution to the better situation of teaching and learning writing skills at HUBT 5.3 Suggestions for further studies Being aware of the restriction on the number of participants, the future related studies should involve a larger number of participants to confirm the reliability as well as validity Furthermore, other researchers who are interested in peer feedback can broaden the scale of the study to cover another kind of feedback, that is, teacher feedback 44 REFERENCES Bartels, N (2004) Written peer response in L2 writing English Teaching Forum, 41(1), pp.34-37 Berg, E.C (1999) “The Effects of Trained Peer Response on ESL Students’ revision Types and Writing Quality” Journal of Second Language Writing 8/3, pp 215-41 Berg, E.C (1990a) “Preparing ESL Students for Peer Response”, TESOL Journal, 8(2), pp 20-25 Brown, H.D (1994) Teaching by Principles: An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy Englewood, New Jersey: Prentice Hall Regents Byrne, D (1988) Teaching writing skills - Longman Handbooks for Language Teachers London: Longman Caulk, N (1994) Comparing teacher and student responses to written work TESOL Quarterly 28, pp.1-8 Chaudron, C (1984) “The effect of feedback on students’ composition revisions”, RELC Journal, 15(2), pp 1-14 Chiu, C-Y (2008) An Investigation of Peer Evaluation in EFL College Writing 25th International Conference of English Teaching Retrieved on April 1st, 2010 from http://www.ccu.edu.tw/fllcccu/2008EIA/English/CO9.pdf Hansen, J.G and Jun Lui (2005) “Guiding Principles for Effective Peer Response” ELT Journal, 59/1, pp 31-38 10 Harmer, J (2004) How to teach writing London: Longman 11 Hyland, F., & Hyland, K (2006) Feedback in the second language writing Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 12 Keh, C.L (1990) “Feedback in the writing process: a model and methods for implementation”, ELT Journal, 44(4), pp 294-303 13 Leki, I (1990) Coaching from the margin: Issues in written response In B Kroll (Ed.), Second language writing: Research insight for the classroom, pp 284-294 New York: Cambridge University Press 45 14 Liu, J and J Hansen (2002) Peer response in second language writing classrooms Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press 15 Min, H.T (2006) The Effects of Trained Peer Review on EFL Students’ Revision and Writing Quality Journal of Second Language Writing.7(2), pp.113-131 16 Mittan, R (1989) The peer response process: Harnessing students’ communicative power New York: Longman 17 Murphy, B (1994) “Correcting students’ writing”, Retrieved from www.elezin [at] maia.cl.au.ac.th English Language Centre, Assumption University, Bangkok, Thailand 18 Nelson, G., and Carson, J (1998) ESL students' perceptions of effectiveness in peer response groups Journal of Second Language Writing, 7, pp 113-131 19 Nelson, G.L., and Murphy, J (1992) An L2 writing group: Task and social dimensions Journal of Second Language Writing 3, pp 257-276 20 Nunan, D (1992) Research Methods in Language Learning Cambridge: Cambrigde University Press 21 Park, A.F., Levernier, J.A & Hollowell, I.M (1986) Structuring Paragraph: A Guide to Effective Writing New York: St Martin’s Press 22 Paulus, T.M (1999) The effect of peer and teacher feedback on student writing Journal of Second Language Writing 8/3, pp.265-289 23 Raimes, A (1983) Techniques in Teaching Writing New York: Oxford University Press 24 Reid, J.M (1993) Teaching ESL writing Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall Regents 25 Rollinson, P (2005) Using peer written feedback in the ESL writing class ELT Journal, 59(1), pp.23-29 26 Seow, A (2002) The Writing Process and Process Writing In Richards, J.C., & Rennandya, W A (eds.) Methodology in Language Teaching – An Anthology of Current Practice: Cambridge University Press 46 27 Soares, D (2005) “Using 'Checklists' to Train Students in Peer Revision in the EFL Writing Classroom” Retrieved on March 17th, 2010 from www.hltmag.co.uk/may07/sart02.rtf 28 Sommers, N (1982) Responding to student writing College Composition and Communication 33(2), pp.148-156 29 Wei and Chen (2004) Supporting Chinese learners of English to implement selfassessment in L2 writing Retrieved on March 15th, 2010 from independentlearning.org/ILA/ila03/ila03_wei_and_chen.pdf 30 Zamel, N (1983) “The composing process of advanced ESL students: six case studies”, TESOL Quarterly, 17, pp 165-187 31 Zhang, S (2008) Assessing the Impact of Peer Revision on English Writing of Tertiary EFL Learners CELEA Journal Retrieved on March 15th, 2010 from http://www.celea.org.cn/teic/78/08070221.pdf I APPENDIX 1: SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE This survey questionnaire is designed for my research into the “Peer feedback in improving writing skills: Perceptions of teachers and second-year non-English major students at Hanoi University of Business and Technology” Your support in completing the survey is highly appreciated All the information provided is reserved for the study purpose and your confidentiality is assured in any circumstances Please give your answers sincerely as only this will guarantee the success of the investigation Thank you very much for your help PART PERCEPTIONS ON PEER WRITTEN FEEDBACK In completing question 1, please choose the answer by circling ONE letter next to your choice I think peer written feedback is …………………… A helpful (please go to question 2-6) B unhelpful (please go to question 7-13) For the following questions, you can choose MORE THAN ONE answer by circling one (or more than one) letter(s) next to each choice For teachers: Students can revise their writings effectively based on their friends’ correction and suggestion Students can avoid all the corrected mistakes next time Students can enhance their confidence in writing thanks to their friends’ encouraging feedback Students can learn how to comment from the way their friends correct their writings Students can improve their writing skill Peers’ feedback is too general Peers’ feedback is too vague and difficult to understand II 9.Peers’ feedback contradicts their friends’ ideas 10 Peers’ feedback is not reliable 11 Peers’ feedback is too negative, so discourages students 12 Peers’ feedback includes too many new words and structures 13 Peers’ feedback includes too many correction codes which are hard to understand For students: You can revise your writings effectively based on your friends’ correction and suggestion You can avoid the corrected mistakes next time You can enhance your confidence in writing thanks to your friends’ encouraging feedback You can learn how to comment from the way your friends correct your writings You can improve your writing skill Peers’ feedback is too general Peers’ feedback is too vague and difficult to understand Peers’ feedback contradicts my ideas 10 Peers’ feedback is not reliable 11 Peers’ feedback is too negative, so discourages me 12 Peers’ feedback includes too many new words and structures 13 Peers’ feedback includes too many correction codes which are hard to understand III PART 2: Students’ perceived difficulties when giving feedback to THEIR peer’ writings Please tick an option that best describes the level of your agreement for each statement (EX=Extremely agree, A=Agree, U=Undecided, D=Disagree, SD=Strongly disagree) You have difficulties in indicating the mistakes related to: Aspects Level of your agreement EX The grammatical structure of the topic sentence The controlling ideas in the topic sentence Whether the topic sentence is too general or too specific Whether the supporting ideas are relevant The use of transitional expressions The use of verbs The use of articles Punctuation Prepositions 10 Word order 11 Word choice 12 Word form 13 Concluding sentence A U D SD IV You have difficulties in providing suggestions to improve the mistakes related to: Aspects Level of your agreement EX The grammatical structure of the topic sentence The controlling ideas in the topic sentence Whether the topic sentence is too general or too specific Whether the supporting ideas are relevant The use of transitional expressions The use of verbs The use of articles Punctuation Prepositions 10 Word order 11 Word choice 12 Word form 13 Concluding sentence A U D SD V APPENDIX 2: CHECKLISTS Paragraph organization: 1.1 Topic sentence: - Is the topic sentence too general or too specific? - Is it grammatically correct? - Does it have the controlling idea? 1.2 - Supporting ideas: Does all the sentences in the paragraph support the controlling idea expressed in the topic sentence? 1.3 Is it able to develop and support the controlling idea effectively? Concluding sentence: Is the concluding sentence relevant to the topic of the paragraph? 1.4 Coherence: - Are the ideas in a logical order? - Are there signals that help readers understand the relationship between the ideas in the paragraph? Grammar: - Are all the verbs used correctly? - Are there any mistakes related to the use of articles? - Are there any mistakes related to the use of preposition? - Are there any punctuation mistakes? Vocabulary: - Are all the words used in correct order? - Do your friends use the right words? - Do your friends use the right word form? VI APPENDIX 3: Symbols for correcting mistakes Symbols Examples Meaning ^ She is ^ teacher Something is missing Wo I like very much eating ice- creams Word order Wf He studies English very good Word form Wt They fly to London yesterday Wrong tense Ag He play tennis every day Wrong agreement They have two car Ww My employment is very generous Wrong word Prep He is interested by history Preposition Art He looks like a artist Article P My name’ Collette Wrong punctuation Who is he Sp This watch looks expesive Wrong spelling ? But his neighbor the house now? I don’t understand what you mean? ... disagreed and 13% strongly disagreed) 36% of the students showed their agreement or strong agreement that they had difficulty in indicating the mistakes (26% agreed and 10% strongly agreed) Besides,... either strongly disagreed or disagreed that they had difficulty in providing suggestions for the mistakes 21% of them chose “undecided” option and about one third of the students (32%) either strongly... can be seen in table 2, 39% of the students either agreed or strongly agreed that they had difficulty in providing suggestions (13% strongly agreed and 26% 31 agreed) and about them same percentage