Feedback On College Student Composition

Chapter One Feedback on College Student WritingMany English teachers in China spend a lot of time and energy responding to students' writing, however, it turns out to be quite disappointing: it dose not seem to bring much effect to the improvement of students' writing ability.But how do students deal with teachers' feedbacks when the writings are returned? According to my investigation on 100 sophomores from the Chinese and the Geography Departments, a few students have a look at the mark and then throw the paper away; some feel disheartened by teachers' color-coding, which aims to point out the mistakes and help them mend their way, but only gives them an overload of information about their weakness; some feel confused with teachers' comments for they are too vague to act on; some are reluctant to revise the paper since their errors are all located and corrected. In general, they feel writing a really tough and uninteresting job. These students are also required to write down their explanation of why they have no interest in writing and their expectation of their teachers.Therefore, in my paper, it is suggested that when teachers respond to students' writing they should offer effective feedbacks, which should direct students how to write and more importantly should fit with the cognitiveand affective needs of particular students. And my paper is to introduce affective factors into the enterprise of teachers' offering feedbacks, and the way to impose the effective and affective feedbacks on students' writings.Chapter Two Affect in LearningIn the 1960s, interest in affective factors gained importance with the growth of humanistic psychology whose theorists stressed the need to unite the cognitive and affective domain. In the late 1970s and 1980s, foreign and second language teacher trainers and researchers expressed the similar concerns. In the second language learning, this affective approach manifested itself in methods such as Community Language Learning.Stern's claim that "the affective component contributes at least as much as and often more to language learning than the cognitive skill" (1983:386), is supported by a large body of recent cross-disciplinary research showing that affective variables have a significant influence on language achievement. Of course, the role of effective aspects stretches far beyond the language learning: they also contribute to the growth of human potential.What is affect? Dickinson, stevick and Jane Arnold hold different views on the definition. On the account that the various emotions affecting language learning are intertwined and interrelated in many ways that make it impossible to isolate completely the influence of any one of them, some of the especially important factors are introduced in the following: motivation, anxiety,self-esteem, attitude and beliefs, and inhibition.The last part of this chapter explains the relationship between the affective factors and writing feedbacks, and proposes that students' affective needs and reactions should be considered as an integral part when teachers respond to students' writing.Chapter Three Students' Attitudes on FeedbacksThis chapter begins with the introduction of several ways of providing feedbacks suggested by the available literature: teacher correction (with comments), error identification, commentary, teacher-student conference, peer correction and self correction.Then a questionnaire is given to 100 sophomores who are taught by the same English writing teacher. The instrument is constructed to inquire about the usefulness of different kinds of feedbacks with which they are familiar. Students are to rate each type of feedback on a 5 point-scale and to provide some brief comments.From the discussion in the following, we get to know that students tend to favor teacher feedback over peer feedback or self-correction. But we also have to gear our attention to students' affective needs apart from their cognitive needs. Whatever kinds of feedbacks are offered, they should be supportive and helpful to the...