The influences of teacher feedback on students paragraph writing

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING VINH UNIVERSITY ĐẶNG NGỌC SANG THE INFLUENCES OF TEACHER FEEDBACK ON STUDENTS’ PARAGRAPH WRITING MASTER’S THESIS IN EDUCATION NGHE AN, 2016 MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING VINH UNIVERSITY ĐẶNG NGỌC SANG THE INFLUENCES OF TEACHER FEEDBACK ON STUDENTS’ PARAGRAPH WRITING Major: Theory and Methodology of English language teaching Code: 60.14.01.11 MASTER’S THESIS IN EDUCATION SUPERVISOR: Lê Văn Canh Assoc Prof PhD NGHE AN, 2016 CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY OF PROJECT REPORT I certify my authority of the Study Project Report submitted entitled the influences of teacher feedback on students' paragraph writing in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts Nghe An, August 2016 Dang Ngoc Sang i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my thanks and appreciations to those people who help and support me to reach my goal First of all, I would like to express my deepest thanks to my superior, Associate Prof Dr.LE VAN CANH 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 sincere thanks to the headmaster, the teachers of English Group and the students at Do Luong high school, Do Luong district, NgheAn province 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 wife, my parents and my children for their love, care, tolerance and encouragement ii ABSTRACT Many language educators and researchers (e.g., Nunan; 1987; Horwitz, 1988; Schulz, 2001) claim that matching the expectations of teachers and students is important for successful language learning Accordingly, it is beneficial for teachers to discover their students’ perceptions toward the feedback they received This study investigates the influences of teacher feedback on students’ paragraph writing The participants included teachers of English and 80 students from grade 10 and grade 12 The data were collected from survey questionnaires for students, the direct interview with nine teachers and teachers’ commentary on the students’ written work The results show that there is a slight mismatch between teachers’ beliefs and students’ preferences for teacher corrective feedback regarding types and forms, various features of writing and error correction techniques Also, it is important for teachers to be aware of the impact of their feedbact on students’ writing On this basis, the study recommends a number of directions for teachers to help The students improve their paragraph writing practices more effectively iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Certification………………………………………………………………….… I Acknowledgements … II Abstract………………………………………………………………….….… III PART ONE - INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale of the study 1.2 The purpose of the study 1.3 Research questions 1.4 Scope of the study 1.5 Methods of the study 1.6 Significance of the research 1.7.Organization of the thesis PART TWO DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW Introduction 1.1 Definition of terminology 1.2 Types of feedback .10 1.2.1 Direct feedback 10 1.2.2 Indirect feedback 12 1.3 The importance of feedback in L2 writing 16 1.4 Previous studies on written feedback in second language writing 22 1.5 The effectiveness of feedback 23 1.6 Timing of feedback 24 CHAPTER II: METHODOLOGY 2.1 Research setting 27 2.2 Participants .28 2.3 Data collection instruments 28 2.4 Methods of Data analysis 28 Research procedures 28 CHAPTER: III FINDING AND ANALLYSING 3.1 Data analysis 29 3.2 Data analysis of student’s survey questionnaire .29 3.2.1 Students’ information 29 3.3 Discussion 37 PART THREE CONCLUSIONS Summary .49 Classroom implications 51 Recommendations and Suggestions .58 Limitation of the study 58 References 60 Appendice 63 PART ONE: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale of the study Today English is considered one of the most important factors to the trend of globalization in all fields of life over the world Thus, English as Second Language has been taught in many countries and the demand to use English fluently as well as to acquire four basic skills is becoming essential among all students As a result, methodology has been studied for years to find out the most effective ways of teaching and learning English In Vietnam, secondary school students have to acquire four skills of English as reading, speaking, listening and writing when they study English Among them, writing is considered the most difficult skill Clearly, Vietnamese students are often much anxious about writing and afraid of making errors or mistakes in writing paragraph Nevertheless, they need to be encouraged to see it as a means of learning, rather than demonstrating learning In order to this, students need to be provided with opportunities to respond to constructive feedback on their work A review of the literature on writing reveals two major areas of feedback such as: direct feedback and indirect feedback Because of the importance of feedback, there have been a lot of studies that focus on all aspects relating to feedback As clear, concise feedback matched to standards will promote students’ achievement feedback plays a very important role in the teaching of any language Through feedback, the writer learns where he or she has misled and confused the reader by not supplying enough information, illogical organization, lack of development ideas, or something simple like inappropriate word-choice or tense In other words, the writers have opportunities to identify their errors and correct them to make better writing Also, the use of teacher feedback in writing classrooms has been generally supported in the literature review as a potentially valuable aid for its social cognitive, affective and methodological benefits (Merlin, (1986), Radecki and Swales (1988), Hedge (2000), Ferris and Roberts (2001)) They all believe that teacher feedback is very important and has a great influence on the success of teaching and learning writing As a teacher of English at Do Luong high school, the researcher is constantly searching for ways to help his students become more confident and effective writers During writing lessons, he finds that his students often make a lot of errors that increase students’ anxiety in writing lesson With a view of language learning as a creative construction process, she shares an agreement with Hedge (2000) in the view that error is an inevitable and positive part of that process (p.15) Hedge also claimed that “learners progress faster with meaningful language practice in a rich linguistic environment and with an informed policy of error correction on the part of the teacher” (p.15) This means teacher – response is an essential step in the writing process as he stated “getting feedback from the teacher and from other students in the class enables learners to test hypotheses and refine their developing knowledge of the language system” (p.13) That is why the researcher focuses on teacher corrective feedback, which she considers a complex troublesome, but important issue in writing classrooms To have a quick view on this aspect, an observation on the writing lessons of four teachers of English in the researcher’s school was conducted within a month The result showed that all the four teachers applied mostly teacher corrective feedback to respond to the students’ writings She wondered if the teachers’ present feedback matched with students’ preferences and how students reacted to the feedback they received All above encouraged the researcher to conduct a survey to explore the influences of teacher feedback on students' paragraph writing and recommend teachers of English some suggested solutions to help their students gain more achievement in writing skill by Using direct feedback when teaching writing is considered as an important since it gave the teacher chances to increase the students ability in writing by using learned centered style Because direct feedback offers interaction and sharing ideas between students and the teacher However, before applying the strategy the teacher should make the process steps before beginning implementation direct feedback as strategy in teaching writing The implementation of Direct Feedback strategy in teaching writing recount text should include writing process 1.2 The purpose of the Study This study is aimed at contributing to the body of research on writing in English as a second or foreign language by investigating the students’ self-reports on teachers’ written corrective feedback on their paragraph writing as well as their perception of the impact of teachers’ feedback on their writing performance 1.3 Research questions In order to achieve the mentioned aims above, the following research questions will be included in the study: What are the common types of feedback teachers provide on students’ writing according to the students’ self-report? How useful the students think of teachers’ feedback on their paragraph writing? What are the students’ suggestions on the changes teachers need to make in the way they provide feedback on the students’ paragraph writing? 1.4 Scope of the study Written feedback is a complex issue and cannot be addressed comprehensively in one single study Therefore, this study limits itself to the investigation of the students’ attitudes towards direct written feedback on students’ paragraph writing as The last one is final version, where the teacher asks the students to compose their draft carefully, find, and edit their grammatical, lexical, and mechanical errors before submitting their work In this stage, the teacher must ensure the students that their final works are free from previous errors since it can affect the content of their final product But the students still have chance to rethink what they have written and go back to editing stage or even planning stage Like Harmer (2012:129) states that writing stages are like writing cycle, if it is necessary to add ideas or edit their writing, we can go back to the previous stage or stages But if it does not need to edit, the students can their writing final version The first type of the teacher’s written feedback is direct feedback Danny and Randolph & Karen (2010) Altena& Pica (2010) Direct teacher feedback simply means that the teacher provides the students with the correct form of their errors or mistakes whether this feedback is provided orally or written It shows them what is wrong and how it should be written, but it is clear that it leaves no work for them to and chance for them to think what the errors and the mistakes are The second type of the teacher’s written feedback is indirect feedback In this type, there are two types of feedback coded indirect feedback and encoded indirect feedback As for the first type “coded indirect feedback”, the teacher underlines the errors or mistakes for the students and then the teacher writes the symbol above the targeted error or mistake and then the teacher gives the composition to the student to think what the error is as this symbol helps the student to think In the second type, the encoded indirect feedback, the teacher underlines or circles the error or the mistake and the teacher doesn’t write the correct answer or any symbols and the student thinks what the error is and corrects Teacher is one of the sources of feedback In providing feedback, writing teachers have at least four roles: as a reader or respondent, as a writing teacher or guide, as a grammarian, and as an evaluator As Keh (1990) and Hedgcock and 54 Leftkowitz (1996) suggest at least four roles that writing teachers play while providing written feedback to students: a reader or respondent, a writing teacher or guide, a grammarian, and an evaluator or judge For the first roles, is about the teacher as a reader or as a respondent In this role, the teachers respond to the content and they may show agreement about an idea or content of the text Teachers may provide positive feedback such as “You made a good point” or “I agree with you” without giving any suggestion or correction The second is the teacher as a writing teacher or as a guide That is, teachers may show their concern about certain points or confusing or illogical ideas in students’ text In this case, teachers still maintain their role as a reader by only asking for clarification or expressing concerns and questions about certain points in the text without giving any correction They may, however, refer students to strategies for revision such as choices of problem solving or providing a possible example The third is the teacher as a grammarian The teacher writes comments or corrective feedback with reference to grammatical mistakes and relevant grammatical rules Teachers may provide a reason as to why a particular grammatical form is not correct or not for a certain context such as choice of tense, use of article, or preposition In this case, the teacher may also give elaborate explanation of grammatical rules to help students improve their text As a grammarian, teacher can provide different function and strategies of feedback One of the functions of feedback is to provide error correction or corrective feedback Corrective feedback generally aims at addressing grammatical errors on students’ writing In addressing grammatical errors on students’ writing, teachers can employ different strategies of providing feedback such as direct feedback strategy Direct feedback, which is a strategy to help the students correct their errors by providing the correct form of the target language Teacherfeedback can also be provided with explicit corrective comments that are by not only indicating an error but also providing the correct form with explicit grammatical explanation or linguistic rules of the target language The last in fourth roles, is the teacher as an evaluator or 55 judge It is very common that many writing teachers may act only as an evaluator whose main role is to evaluate the quality of students’ writing as an end product of a writing process and grade students’ writing based on their evaluation Discrepancies in findings, or in interpreting these findings, have sparked a debate in the last 15 years on whether corrective feedback is effective or ineffective The debate was initiated by Truscott (1996) who unalterably holds that feedback, in the form of grammatical error correction, is neither effective nor useful, and even harmful for student learning Therefore, he suggests that corrective feedback should be abandoned In contrary, Chandler (2003) and Ferris (1999) argue that corrective feedback is effective and helpful in reducing the errors on students’ paragraphs More recent studies also lend support, providing evidence in favor of corrective feedback Bitchener (2008); Bitchener et al (2005);Ellis et al (2008) Based on the findings of their studies, they maintain that teacher corrective feedback is effective and helpful for students in improving grammatical accuracy in writing their paragraphs From the above information, it can be concluded that direct feedback is effective to be used in teaching writing Teaching writing using direct feedback is considered as an important since it gave the teacher chances to increase the students ability in writing by using learnedcentered style Since previous statements have considered that learned-centered style in form of peer or group work is preferred than compositions because it offers interaction and sharing ideas between students However, before implementing the strategy the teacher should make the process steps before starting applying direct feedback as strategy in teaching writing The implementation of Direct Feedback strategy in teaching writing recount text should include writing process; they are planning, drafting, editing, and final version Harmer (2007: 325-327) 56 Based on those concepts, the implementation of Direct Feedback strategy in teaching writing recount text in the class has some activities to They are: The teacher explains the nature of recount text, it start from the purpose, the function, the generic structure, and the language features to the students by some modification by using brainstorming or etc The teacher also gives example of recount text to the students in order to make the students understand with the teacher’s explanation and example of how to make mind mapping The teacher gives the students some topics to write recount text The teacher asks the students to make such like mind mapping as the planning stage The students make mind mapping to write down their ideas they want to write it individually After the students make mind mapping on their recount text, the teacher asks them to exchange their work in pairs They can give comments, questions, suggestions, and corrections about the content, organization, vocabulary, language use, and mechanic on their partner mind mapping to compose into recount text draft Then each student can write their recount text draft based on their friend questions, suggestions, comments, and corrections The next activity is sharing In this case, the teacher calls some students randomly one by oneto come forward to show their recount text by writing their text into white board Therefore, the other students get patient too and also learn which one is not appropriate word, the mechanics, or the content by giving comments orsuggestions And the most necessary, the teacher givesDirect Feedback to their recount text Teacher gives direct feedback by giving explicit corrective comments, symbols, or underlining Ellis et al (2006) suggest that explicit corrective comments can take two forms: (a) explicit correction in which teacher response clearly indicates what is incorrect and provides the correct form, or (b) metalinguistic feedback which explains grammatical or linguistic rules Lyster and Ranta (1997) define metalinguistic feedback as “comments, information, or questions related to the well-formedness of the learner’s utterance 57 without explicitly providing the correct form” (p 47) Finally, the students submit their recount text result as the final version to the teacher on the next meeting Recommendations and Suggestions Regrading the use of written corrective feedback, based on the data interpretation and the previous conclusion, the researcher has some suggestions to the teachers and the other researchers The researcher constructs his suggestions as follows: 1) The teacher has to minimize the time consuming when she check the attendance the students It means that the teacher should not call the student’s name one by one 2) In the process of teaching, the teacher should know and understand the students’ characteristics It means that the teacher does not give the students too much explaining or reminding them 3) The researcher would like to invite next researchers who conduct the similar study to make improvement on this study, such as using the same field but different subjects It means they can use the other subjects 4) For the teacher and other researcher, the writer suggest to gives feedback for correct the content and organization Limitations of the study The findings of this study are only about the students’ perceptions of the written corrective feedback types that their teachers used in teaching, their perception of the effectiveness of teacher feedback on their paragraph writing Data were sonly reliant on 58 the questionnaire While the results can inform teachers of the students’ preferences and expectations regarding the written corrective feedback, it is not clear the extent to which the teacher feedback helps the students to improve their paragraph writing as well as what type of written corrective feedback is most helpful to the students’ writing performance Future studies should be needed to investigate these issues 59 REFERENCES Bitchener, J (2008) Evidence in support of written corrective feedback Journal of SecondLanguage Writing, 17, 102-118 Bitchener, J., &Knoch, U (2009).The relative effectiveness of different types of direct written corrective feedback System, 37, 322-329 Bitchener, J., &Knoch, U (2010) The Contribution of Written Corrective Feedback toLanguage Development: A Ten Month Investigation Applied Linguistics, 31(2),193214 Bitchener, J., Young, S., & Cameron, D (2005).The effect of different types of correctivefeedback on ESL student writing Journal of Second Language Writing, 14, 191-205 Chandler, J (2003) The efficacy of various kinds of error feedback for improvement in theaccuracy and fluency of L2 student writing Journal of Second Language Writing,12, 267-269 Cramer, S., et al (2008).Online or Face-to-Face?Which Class to Take.Voices from the Middle, (2), 25 Elashri, I I (2013) The Impact of the Direct Teacher Feedback Strategy on the EFL Secondary Stage Students' Writing performance.Mesir: Mansoura University Ellis, R., Sheen, Y., Murakami, M., & Takashima, H (2008) The effects of focused andunfocused written corrective feedback in an English as a foreign language context.System, 36, 353-371 60 Ferris, D (2003b) Responding to writing In B Kroll (Ed.), Exploring the dynamics of second language writing, (pp 119-140) Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press Ferris, D R (2004) The “Grammar Correction” debate in L2 writing: Where are we, and where we go from here? (and what we in the meantime…?) Journal of SecondLanguage Writing, 13, 49-62 Ferris, D (2006) Does error feedback help student writers? New evidence on the short- and long-term effects of written error correction In K Hyland and F Hyland (Eds.), Feedback in second language writing: Context and issues (pp 81104) Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press Ferris, D R., &Hedgcock, J S (2005) Teaching ESL composition: Purpose, process, and practice (2nd ed.) Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Harmer, J (2007).The Practice of English Language Teaching Fourth Edition, UK: Cambridge Jacobs, G M., Curtis, A., Braine, G., & Huang, S Y (1998) Feedback on student writing: Taking the middle path Journal of Second Language Writing, 7(3), 307-317 Jacobs, H., Zinkgraf, S., Wormuth, D., Hartfiel, V F., &Hughey, J (1981).Testing ESLComposition: A practical approach Rowley, MA: Newbury House Lee, I (2003) L2 writing teachers’ perspectives, practices and problems regarding errorfeedback Assessment Writing, 8, 216-237 Keh, C L (1990) Feedback in the writing process: A model and methods for implementation.ELT Journal, 44(4), 294-304 61 Lee, I (2008) Understanding teachers’ written feedback practices in Hong Kong secondaryclassrooms Journal of Second Language Writing, 17, 69-85 Lyster, R., &Ranta, L (1997) Corrective feedback and learner uptake: Negotiation of form incommunicative classrooms Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 20, 3766 Merrill, D M (1994).Instructional design theory Englewood Cliffs, NJ: EducationalTechnology Publications Merrill, D M (2002) Instructional strategies and learning styles: Which takes precedence?In R A Reiser& J V Dempsey (Eds.), Trends and issues in instructional design andtechnology (99-106) Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education Inc Nunan, D (.(2003) Practice English Language Teaching New York: Mc Graw Hill Education Othman, N.B (2005) Feedback Lesson on Writing Assessment with Four Different Scoring Strategies Malaysia: Pendidikan Sultan Idris University Purnawarman, P 2011 Impacts of Different Types of Teacher Corrective Feedback in Reducing Grammatical Errors on ESL/EFL Students’ Writing Virginia: Polytechnic Institute and State University Randolph, T & Lea, K (2010).A study of Teacher Feedback in Small Groups with Weekly Writing Assignments Unpublished, Ed.D.Dissertation, Trevecca Nazarene University, 3413061 62 Appendix Survey Questionnaires for Students This survey questionnaire is designed for my research into the teacher’s corrective feedback in high school students’ writing Your assistance in completing the survey is highly appreciated All the information provided is reserved for the study purpose, and you can be confident that you will not be identified in any discussion of the data Thank you very much for your cooperation! Dang Ngoc sang, A teacher of English at Do Luong high school, Do Luong, ngheAn I Personal information: *Your gender: Male: Female: *Your age: ………………… *How long have been learning English? _year(s) *How long have you been learning writing? _year(s) II Your opinions on the feedback you received Below are some beliefs that some students have about teacher’s feedback to their written work they received Please put a tick in the appropriate box or give short answers in the space provided How many times does your teacher respond to each of your written works? a never b almost never c sometimes d often e very often f other (please specify): How helpful is the teacher feedback in the following forms to your revision? 63 Forms of feedback Not helpful at Helpful Very helpful all a Questions a…………… a…… a…… b Statement b…………… b…… b…… c Imperative c…………… c…… c…… d Exclamation d…………… d…… d…… e Making the errors, but not actually e…………… e…… e…… correcting them Do you find it is easy to understand your teacher feedback? YES NO If NO, can you give the reason(s) why? a feedback is too general to understand b teachers use new vocabulary and structures in feedback c teachers’ including hedges in feedback confuses me (e.g., perhaps, may be…) d teachers use new feedback strategies What strategies you use to solve your problem? a asking the teacher or peers for help b consulting a grammar book or dictionary c doing nothing d others (please specify):…………………………………………… How important is teacher feedback to your writing? a not important b important c very important 64 III Your preferences for teacher feedback on writing Read each statement and then decide if you: (1) strongly agree, (2) agree, (3) neither agree nor disagree, (4) disagree, (5) strongly disagree Please write the number of your response in the space provided When responding to your written work, teacher should always: Items a Point out errors in grammar (verb tenses, subject/verb agreement, article use…etc.) b Point out errors in spelling c Point out errors in punctuation d Point out errors in vocabulary choice e Make comments on the organization of the paper f Make comments on the ideas expressed in the paper g Use a set of correction of proof-reading symbols h Use a red – colored pen Answer the following questions by circling the number of the appropriate response from question to question 7 What kind of feedback would you prefer to receive? a Direct feedback b Indirect feedback c Both of them How you want your teacher to indicate an error in your written work? a By crossing what is incorrect and writing the correct word or structure b By showing where the error is and giving clue about how to correct it 65 c By only showing where the error is d By ignoring the errors in grammar, spelling, punctuation…etc., and only paying attention to the ideas expressed e Other (please specify): ………………………………………… If there are many errors in a paper, what you want your English teacher to do? a Correct all errors, major and minor b Correct all errors the teacher considers major, but not the minor ones c Correct most but not necessary all of the major errors if there are many of them d Correct only a few of the major errors no matter how many there are e Correct all repeated errors whether major or minor f Correct no errors and respond only to the idea expressed 66 Appendix Specific objectives to achieve in the writing section in Grade 10-Grade 12 Units Grade 10 Grade 11 Grade 12 Writing a narrative Writing about a friend Writing about family rules Writing a personal letter Describing typical features Filling in a form to describe a past of a Vietnamese conical experience leaf hat Building sentences based Writing about Writing an informal letter on people’s background of invitation given words Re- ordering given sentences to make a complete paragraph Writing a letter of Writing a formal letter Describing complaint expressing gratitude education school system in Vietnam Writing a of Describing information in Writing a letter of request instructions a table Writing a confirmation letter Writing set advantages Writing a letter of reply Writing a formal letter of job application about Interpreting statistics on Writing a report based on and population from a chart given information disadvantages of the mass media Writing an informal letter: directions Describing giving Describing a celebration’s activities Describing the world you would like to live in in the future Writing a formal letter to Describing main features of 67 information from a express table 10 11 satisfaction dissatisfaction Writing a letter of invitation Writing about measures to Describing a location Writing a letter of Describing acceptance or refusal Writing a profile protect endangered species and possible results information Describing a book from a chart Describing 12 or a desert the preparations for the Giving instructions coming Asian Games 13 14 Describing a film Writing Writing about a collection an Describing a camping announcement holiday 15 Describing a city Writing a biography 16 Describing a chart Describing a sporting event (a football match) Writing a short description of an international organization Describing a chart Writing a report on a Writing man-made place 68 a letter recommendation of ... comprehension of teacher feedback 40% YES NO 60% Chart 3.2.1.3 described about the students’ opinions on the comprehension of the feedback 0nly 40% of the students said that they found the teacher feedback. .. written comment on student drafts and student -teacher conferences In the scope of the thesis, the author mentioned teacher feedback only In this section, types of teacher feedback and how these types... and questions to indicate place and type of content feedback These types of comments and questions should focus students' attention on the content of the composition and the process they followed