Effects Of Computer-generated Versus Teachers' Written Feedback On High School Students' Writing Coherence

Computer-generated feedback software is adopted in many countries to guide and evaluate English writing with the improvement of educational technology.A great many of Chinese researchers have a growing interest in investigating the reliability and validity of automated feedback software.Moreover,a growing number of studies have focused on the effects of computer-generated feedback on college students' drafts.However,limited experimental studies have been to compare the effects between computer-generated and teachers' written feedback on students' writing development.Therefore,the current study investigated the effects of computergenerated versus teachers' written feedback on high school students' writing coherence and raised two questions: 1)Which type of feedback is more effective in improving students' writing coherence,computer-generated or teachers' written feedback? 2)What are perceptions of participants' and instructors' towards computergenerated feedback? The study included a pre-test,a post-test,three writing assignments,and two semi-structured interviews.Sixteen students were assigned into two groups: experimental group and control group.Students in the experimental group received computer-generated feedback,while students in the control group obtained teachers' written feedback.The findings showed that two types of feedback improved students' writing coherence,while teachers' written feedback was a bit more effective than automated feedback.According to the results of interviews,eight students in the experimental group and two teachers admitted the advantages of PEG Writing and pointed out its deficiencies.The findings suggested that six students supported to apply automated feedback software as an assisted tool.And two teachers likewise had positive attitudes and put forward insightful and targeted suggestions for applying automated feedback software into the high school.