Reformulation Improving Accuracy In Chinese College Students English Writing

There have been abundant researches into the use of corrective feedback (CF) in English writing. Among the written corrective feedback (WCF) strategies proposed, reformulation is believed to have much potential to provide learners with opportunity to notice the gap between their original texts and the reformulated versions. Nevertheless, the effectiveness of reformulation remains uncertain. Thus, the present research applied a slightly modified form of reformulation to the teaching of English writing in the Chinese setting. It focused on the question whether Chinese college students'accuracy of using grammar and vocabulary in their English writing can be effectively enhanced with the reformulation approach.68college students (second-year non-English majors), in2classes from Southwest University, participated in this study. One class served the experimental class, receiving the teaching approach of reformulation in their English writing course.30students from this class were selected as the subjects forming the experimental group. The other class served as the control class, treated with the approach of non-reformulation (traditional direct correction). Similarly, from this class,30students were sampled as subjects for the control group. The2groups of subjects took a preliminary test of argumentative writing, and a grammar and vocabulary pretest before the experiment, and a grammar and vocabulary posttest at the end of the experiment. The subjects'performances in the argumentative writing test were scored by3raters. The test data were analyzed with the statistic procedures of k-related-samples non-parametric test, independent-samples t test, or ANCOVA.According to the argumentative writing test result, the subjects in each group were classified into2levels:good and poor subjects. The pretest result indicated that before the experiment, the experimental group and the control group were not different in their grammar and vocabulary use, and neither were the good learners from the2groups. However, the poor learners of the2groups were different. In addition, the2groups had the same teacher, teaching materials, and length of class time, etc.The posttest results showed that the reformulation approach was indeed more effective than the non-reformulation approach (direct-correction) in improving the Chinese college students'accuracy of using grammar and vocabulary in English writing. Furthermore, reformulation was a very useful pedagogical tool for the good learners, but the poor learners did not benefit significantly from the reformulation approach.The findings of the study carry both theoretical and pedagogical implications. Theoretically, new evidence was found in support of the Noticing Hypothesis. Pedagogically, the findings suggest that teachers should design more awareness-raising tasks in reformulation to motivate students maximally. A crucial component of practicing reformulation is that teachers should train students, especially those poor in writing, how to notice the gap between their writings and the reformulated versions.