A Survey On English Written Corrective Feedback Preferences Of Senior High School Students

Teachers’ corrective feedback is essential in language acquisition,because that it is not only one of the tools that help teachers carry out teaching plans,but also an important source for students to obtain target language input.Besides,it is the main way to improve the accuracy of language output.Recent years,the number of these researches presents a rising trend.However,most of these studies take all the students as a whole,ignoring the individual differences of the students.Accordingly,this study applied cluster analysis,turning research perspective to “whole person” from variables,to divided subjects into different motivational types.Taking this as the basis,the research investigated the general situation of learners’ preferences of WCF,then different motivation-type learners’ preferences of WCF by questionnaire.Finally,reasons for different preferences of WCF were analyzed by interviews.Therefore,concrete and effective suggestions are provided for high school teachers in order to optimize the WCF in daily teaching.This study is based on the Theory of Humanism,Input Hypothesis,Interactive Hypothesis and L2 MSS,and it investigated 250 students in Nanning,Liuzhou,and Baise in Guangxi province through questionnaire and interviews.It aims to solve the following three questions,(1)What is the general situation of learners preferences of WCF type,manner and object?(2)What are different motivation-type learners’ preferences of the above three aspects?(3)What can be attributed to as different preferences of WCF?The research results present as follows.(1)Generally speaking,the senior high school students prefer comprehensive type of WCF,combining with various methods.And their preferences of WCF manner is underlining the error,using code to identify the type of mistake.Meanwhile,their preference of WCF object is grammatical mistakes.(2)Different motivational-type senior high school students show different preferences of type,manner and object of WCF.They prefer the feedback type combining with various feedback methods,and they show differences on the directness of feedback manner,and their preferences of errors on language form or language meaning also differ from each other.(3)The reason for the preferences of comprehensive WCF type is that this could provide references from many aspects,which is beneficial for error correction.The reason for the preferences of different WCF manner is the differences on learning ability,willingness to spare efforts,and attitudes towards learning.The reason for preferences of correction on language form is affected by the mode of evaluation and learning environment.In order to improve the quality of WCF,this study provides the following two suggestions basing on the research results.(1)When teachers are going to provide WCF,different motivational-type learners’ WCF preferences should be taken into consideration to some extent,which is mean to improve the effectiveness of WCF.(2)As to the object of WCF,learners put more attention to the errors of language form and neglect the importance of language meaning.So that,during the process of teaching,teachers should gradually influence the importance of language meaning and optimize the feedback on language meaning.