An Empirical Study On The Effects Of Teacher Feedback On English Writing Teaching In Junior Middle Schools

Based on Schmidt’s Noticing Hypothesis and Swain’s Output Hypothesis,this thesis makes an empirical study on the effects of teacher feedback on the students’ English writing in junior middle schools.It mainly focuses on the influence of different teacher feedback on students with different English proficiency in the aspect of writing accuracy and writing content.English writing teaching is an important part in English teaching in junior middle schools,and it also reflects the students’ integrated English language competence.Teacher feedback is an essential link between students’writing and teachers5 teaching.Many scholars have done studies on the relationship between the teacher feedback and students’ English writing,but there is continuing disagreement about the effects of teacher feedback on students5 second language writing.Combined with the experience of English teaching,this paper applied teacher written feedback to practical English writing teaching.This thesis intends to probe into the following two questions:(1)What are the effects of direct feedback and indirect feedback on improving the accuracy of English writing in junior middle school students with different English proficiency?(2)What are the effects of specific feedback and general feedback on improving English writing content of junior middle school students with different English levels?This thesis made an empirical study,choosing 40 students from Class 1601 and 38 students from Class 1602 as study objects from a junior middle school.We respectively dividied them into two groups according to their writing scores in the pre-test and also taking their daily performance in English class into consideration.In order to verify the effects of different types of teacher written feedback on improving students’ writing ability,the author designed a 16-week experiment,during which the teacher provided direct feedback and specific feedback to students in Class 1601 and gave indirect feedback and general feedback to students in Class 1602.Through comparing students’ writing accuracy scores and writing content scores in the pre-test and the post-test,combined with the result of the interview,we concluded that the effects of TWF on students with different language proficiency were different.This study found that:(1)Direct and indirect teacher feedback both can improve students5 writing accuracy,but the effects of direct feedback on students with lower English proficiency are more significant,while the effects of indirect feedback are more effective on the students with higher English proficiency.(2)Specific and general teacher feedback both can enhance students5 writing content,but the effects of specific feedback on students with higher or lower English proficiency are more effective than the effects of general feedback.Hopefully,the research can provide some reference for English teachers to teach writing in junior middle schools.However,there are still some limitations.For example,the research sample is a little small,and the data analysis are far from adequate out of the limitation of the author’s ability.Future studies may enlarge the research sample and explore the influence of teacher feedback on English writing teaching in junior middle schools.