A Study On Written Corrective Feedback In Junior High School EFL Writing

Written corrective feedback, as a type of teachers’feedback, has received a lot of attention for many years. Many studies have been conducted to explore its effectiveness in the improvement of students’writing accuracy and how to provide feedback from different aspects. Even though there are some controversies about the effectiveness of providing written corrective feedback, it is regarded by both teachers and students as a helpful way to improve students’writing and it still remains a common practice in EFL writing instruction.Nowadays, many teachers are spending a great amount of time on students’writing, and as a result written corrective feedback takes up a large proportion of their time. In order to better understand the effects of such time-consuming efforts, research in this field is called for to examine the relevant factors including the teachers’and students’ attitudes and perspectives on this issue. The present study aims to investigate teachers’ perspectives, their actual performance, and students’preferences from the following six aspects:teachers’purpose of providing written corrective feedback, the amount of written corrective feedback, use of marking codes, types of written corrective feedback, the effectiveness of providing written corrective feedback and the responsibility of error correction.In this study,15teachers and180students at Guangming New District Experimental School in Shenzhen, Guangdong, participated in the research and answered the questionnaires.15teachers and24students whose compositions were collected received semi-structured interviews. And the results reveal that there are no significant differences between teachers’practices and students’preferences. Although both teachers and students hold positive attitude to written corrective feedback, they are still not so satisfied with its efficiency, hoping to find a more effective way to solve these problems. Furthermore, the study shows that the students prefer comprehensive corrective feedback and the use of marking codes, which are also practiced by most teachers. However, the teachers consider them as time-consuming jobs in practice. For students, they like direct corrective feedback and lack the ability of self-correcting. For teachers, they use limited techniques of written corrective feedback in practice and tend to focus more on the short-term goal of error correction. In addition, the study also indicates that to some degree students’attitudes and preferences are affected by their teachers’practices. At the same time, the teachers’ practices are also influenced by the reaction of their students. Drawing on the findings of this study and the previous studies in this field, the author suggests that teachers should try to use various types of written corrective feedback for the students of different levels, improving students’ability of self-correcting and reducing their own burden of providing feedback. And they should not only focus on the short-term goal of corrective feedback but also on the students’ long-term benefits. Furthermore, the teachers should fully take advantage of their influence on students to train students’self-correcting.