On The Effect Of Automated Feedback And Automated-Plus-Teacher Feedback On Writing Motivation Of College Students

As the essential part of the process approach, feedback plays a significant role on the improvement of writing motivation and English writing abilities. With the expansion of college enrollment, students increased in numbers and teacher feedback, the dominant kind of feedback, cannot provide all students with qualified feedback. Automated feedback, convenient and efficient, is gradually integrated into English writing education, and becomes more and more useful with the rapid development of science and technology.Motivation, an inducement to language learning, plays a significant role in the improvement of English writing. With strong desire to do English writing, learners can build motivation and take actions.In this thesis, in order to find out the effects of two majors as well as two kinds of feedback, automated plus teacher feedback and automated feedback only, to writing motivation of college students, researches are conducted.Jukuu system, a domestic automated essay scoring system, is used as a tool and platform in this thesis, and college students of Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications in the second year are studied as subjects. They are in two classes:the experimental group and the control group. Each class includes students from two majors: Information and Communication Engineering as well as Economic and Management. The research is based on two questions:First, between two kinds of feedback:the teacher plus automated feedback as well as automated feedback, which one has more effect on writing motivation of college students? Second, between the teacher plus automated feedback as well as automated feedback, does major make any effect on writing motivation of college students? The subjects are asked to write six compositions during the semester and the data was collected from four questionnaires though SPSS22.0and the results of interviews. Here, feedback and major are two variables influencing students’writing motivation and the motivation is studied on nine dimensions for concrete results.After18weeks’ research, the main results of the study are as follows:Firstly, automated plus teacher feedback is more motivated than the automated feedback on the overall motivation. The former improve each dimension of writing motivation greatly while there is no significant difference of dimensions under the latter except communication and learning situation.Secondly, under the automated plus teacher feedback, the writing motivation of students majoring in EM and ICE improve significantly on the writing motivation, and the latter improved much faster. On the other hand, under the automated feedback only, the writing motivation of students majoring in EM and ICE are almost at the same level before and after the research, and the former improved a little higher.Limitations and suggestions are proposed about how to provide effective feedback and improve students’writing motivation for future college writing instruction at the end of the thesis, according to the results and findings of the research.