The Effect Of Model Essay Feedback On Non-English Major's English Writing

As an important means in improving students' English writing ability,written feedback has been discussed extensively by scholars both at home and abroad.This thesis plans to discuss a relatively new feedback mode——model essay feedback.Empirical study andquestionnaire survey will be used to discuss the effect of model essay feedback on non-English Major's English writing,including the effect on writing accuracy,the effect on sentence complexity and the effect on textual coherence.In order to demonstrate the effectiveness of model essay feedback on the three aspects of non-English Major's compositions,the researcher plans to choose the indirect feedback mode(underlining errors +comments)to contrast with the model essay feedback.At the same time,the researcher designs one control class in this study,and control class won't receive any feedback information.This experiment was conducted in Zhixing College of Hubei University.Participants came from three non-English Major's parallel classes of Bioengineering Department and the total number of students is 108.They are the first year students in college and nearly all of them are in the same age.All the participants were arranged into two experimental classes and one control class according to their English score in College Entrance Examination and pretest result.The three classes were respectively called EC1,EC2 and CC.Participants in EC1 received teacher's model essay feedback,participants in EC2 received teacher's indirect feedback mode(underlining errors + comments)and participants in CC didn't receive any feedback information from the teacher.The whole experimentation lasted 10 weeks and the intervention stage lasted 8 weeks,while the two weeks were regarded as one experimental period.All participants were asked to write 10 argumentative compositions in the whole experimentation,but only the compositions written in the pretest and post-test were collected and analyzed.The researcher used SPSS statistics software to analyze the collected data,and finally the results were presented by the tables of Paired Sample T-test and One Way ANOVA.The focuses in this study include three variables:non-English Major's writing accuracy,sentence complexity and textual coherence.The researcher used the rate of errors per 100 words to measure participants' writing accuracy.The lower the rate is,the higher the writing accuracy will be.The value of sentence complexity equals the number of clauses divide the number of sentences in the whole writing,and the larger the value is,the higher the sentence complexity will be.The researcher measured the textual coherence of writing through calculating the number of transition words used in participants' compositions.The results of one-way ANOVA in pretest shows,before the experiment,there is no significant difference among the three classes in the writing accuracy,sentence complexity and textual coherence.After 8 weeks' experimental treatment,the results of Paired Sample T-test between the pretest and the post-test in each class show that participants in both model essay feedback class and indirect feedback class have improved the writing accuracy.While,only the participants in model essay feedback improved the sentence complexity and textual coherence.The participants in both indirect feedback class and control class didn't have any improvement in this two variables.The results of multiple comparisons in one-way ANOVA in the post-test among the three classes presented that,in the variable of writing accuracy,control class respectively has significant difference with EC1 and EC2,and there is no significant difference between EC1 and EC2,which shows that both model essay feedback and indirect feedback can help participants improve writing accuracy.In the variable of sentence complexity,EC1 respectively has significant difference with EC2 and CC,and there is no significant difference between EC2 and CC,which shows participants in EC1 improve their sentence complexity after experiment.In the variable of textual coherence,EC1 respectively has significant difference with EC2 and CC,and there is no significant difference between EC2 and CC,which shows that participants in EC1 improve their textual coherence after experiment.This experimental study demonstrates that both model essay feedback mode and indirect feedback mode can help students improve writing accuracy to some extent.Compared with indirect feedback mode,model essay feedback mode exerts positive effects on students'sentence complexity and can help students improve textual coherence in writing.After finishing the experimental stage,72 participants in both two experiment classes participated in the questionnaire survey.There are 10 questions in the questionnaire,which aims to get the information that the research can't get from the empirical study and know about participants' attitude towards the model essay feedback mode and the indirect feedback mode that they receive in this study,and know about participants' expectation to English teacher's written feedback in future's writing teaching.The results of questionnaire show that most participants in both two experimental classes think that the model essay feedback can help them improve writing accuracy,sentence complexity and textual coherence.The result is the same as the conclusion getting from the experiment.This study enriches the current research in this field and provides the new perspective for discussing teacher 's written feedback,which has some guiding significance for Chinese non-English Major's writing teaching.When giving students feedback information,English teacher can choose the different modes according to the different aspects.About the errors in linguistic forms and grammar,the teacher can consider to use the indirect feedback mode to point out student's errors.About the problems existing in students' textual aspects,the teacher can consider to use the method of model essay feedback.At last,the researcher pointed out the limitations of this study and gave some suggestions for future's research.