Influence Of Teacher Feedback On Noticing In English Writing By Students Of Different Cognitive Styles

Individual differences became an important aspect in the study of second languageacquisition. Cognitive styles, especially field-independence and field-dependence, and theirinfluences have been much explored in SLA in recent years. Noticing may be of crucialimportance to human development and is also an important cognitive process in Englishcomposing. In recent years many studies have been conducted to investigate the nature ofteacher feedback and the role it might play in English writing. The present study, from theperspective of FI/FD cognitive style, makes the hypothesis that in English writing, no matternoticing tendencies or revision tendencies, FI students focus more on contents on surfacelevel, while FD students focus more on contents on meaning level. Using a process-orientedparadigm, this study investigated noticing features of FI/FD students in the process of writingand influences of teacher feedback on noticing and writing achievement in a six-stage writingtask.The present study aims at investigating:(1) whether there are differences in noticing on surface and meaning level, errors onsurface and meaning level and revision on surface and meaning level by FI/FD students andwhether these differences are significant;(2) the influences of noticing tendencies and revision tendencies by FI/FD students ontheir writing proficiency;(3) whether noticing tendencies by FI/FD students, under the function of teacherfeedback, change over time and what the characteristics of development are. The major findings of this study are presented as follows:Firstly, FI students tended to notice contents on surface level, while FD students tendedto notice contents on meaning level.Secondly, significant positive correlations existed between noticing on surface level andrevision on surface level by FI students and their writing achievement. And the latter was asignificant predictor for writing achievement. Noticing on meaning level by FD students wasfound to exhibit significant positive correlations with their revision on meaning level.Thirdly, with the help of teacher feedback, noticing on meaning level by FI students andnoticing on surface level by FD students were increasing gradually. However, thedevelopment of noticing fluctuated.The implications of the present study lie in the following aspects:First, understanding students’ FI/FD cognitive style helps the teacher be familiar withstudents’ dispositions and developmental modes in second language acquisition and findproblems. Thus the teacher can make targeted syllabus, help students develop reasonablelearning strategies and enhance their underlying knowledge.Second, FI and FD students really take different developmental patterns in their writing.Despite their stability, they are not invariable. So the teacher, on the foundation of developingFI/FD students’ underlying advantages in learning, should also develop their strengths andovercome their weaknesses. Thus it can help students improve their overall learningproficiency and help teachers improve their teaching methods.Third, exploring students’ noticing in the process of writing helps teachers effectivelydeal with students’ problems they may have in output. And appropriate feedback from theteacher can help students correct their problems and promote their noticing.Fourth, this study employs a process writing approach which is conducted at six stagesfor one topic writing. The six stages are composing, feedback, revision, a second feedback, asecond revision and a writing conference. These two processes of feedback and revision makestudents notice their problems and intensify their underlying knowledge through revision.This kind of process writing approach is an effective way of improving English writingteaching. However, the present study has its own limitations. In the first place, analysis in thepresent study is not thorough enough as a result of time limitation and small sample size.Secondly, emphasizing noticing only for the improvement of English writing is far fromenough. In order to improve students’ English writing proficiency, teachers should payattention to students’ language and logical thinking ability in their writing. Thirdly, theinterference of test effects may exist. Different writing materials influence the consistency andaccuracy of the results.