A Study Of Teachers’ Written Commentary Types On English Writing Of Junior High School Students At Different Levels Under The Output Theory

The National English Curriculum Standards for Compulsory Education(2017)sets goals and requirements with the description of “doing things in English” for students at different levels,aiming at cultivating students’ comprehensive language application ability.Writing instruction requires students to understand real language materials and express actual ideas.Meanwhile,it also points that the core of formative assessment is to provide students with specific help and guidance through different feedback.With the new progress of SLA,an increasing amount of attention has been paid to teachers’ written feedback in English writing.Previous studies have mostly focused on the impact of teachers’ written feedback types on the accuracy,fluency and complexity of students’ compositions,focusing on the specific group-college students.Therefore,in order to make some targeted pedagogical suggestions about teachers’ written commentaries based on junior students’ English writing,this study firstly investigates the current characteristics of English teachers’ written commentaries.Based on this,the present study further discusses the impact of teachers’ written commentary types on the revision effects and writing achievements of students with different writing levels,so as to provide some constructive suggestions for English teachers on how to give written commentaries for junior high school students with individual differences.Then,this study randomly selected 104 students(questionnaire investigation participants)and 36 students(composition research participants)from X junior high school in X area,and collected data by the questionnaire,writing text and interview.Based on Swain’s Output Theory,this study was implemented to address three research questions: 1.What are the current characteristics of English teachers’ written commentaries? 2.What impact do teachers’ written commentary types have on the revision effects of students at different writing levels? 3.What impact do teachers’ written commentary types have on the writing achievements of students at different writing levels?Then,the quantitative data was analyzed by SPSS 25.0 and the interview was analyzed by multiple transcription.The research findings reveal that: 1.English teachers in junior high school often give commentaries in different types,and the focus points of teachers’ written commentaries slightly differ from students’ expectations.2.Different teachers’ written commentary types have different impacts on the revision effects of students at different writing levels.Among four commentary types,statements and imperatives are the most beneficial commentary types for high-level students and average-level students to revise their compositions.Imperatives and hedges are the most suitable commentary types for low-level students to revise their compositions.3.Different teachers’ written commentary types have different impacts on high-level students’ writing achievements.Among four commentary types,statements and imperatives are the most conducive commentary types to improving high-level students’ writing achievements.Different teachers’ written commentary types have no significant impacts on average-level students’ and low-level students’ writing achievements.Finally,this study also provides some specific suggestions to improve the effectiveness of English teachers’ written commentaries.Firstly,when commenting,teachers should give full consideration to students’ English writing ability,controlling the difficulty of vocabularies and the complexity of expressions.Secondly,teachers should choose the appropriate commentary types regarding students’ current writing ability.Thirdly,teachers should give more specific and individualized written commentaries,and adjust the focus points of written commentaries constantly.These results of study not only contribute to how to provide effective commentaries for students with different levels in junior high school,but also enrich and develop the extant researches of output theory.Meanwhile,practical suggestions for pedagogy and future research are also identified.