Effects Of Direct And Indirect Written Corrective Feedback On Students’ Writing Performance In Junior High School

Writing cannot be ignored in the English teaching of junior high school.Through writing,students can timely feedback their learning achievements,promoting learning efficiency and enhancing English learning ability.In the senior high school entrance examination every year,the writing part focuses on the comprehensive application of vocabulary,phrases,language use,and structure.Therefore,how teachers can effectively improve students’ English writing performance has become one of the main topics of English teaching research and practice.Written corrective feedback has been regarded as an important way to improve students’ English writing performance by teaching researchers and practitioners since it was put forward.Many foreign experimental studies have also proved the effectiveness of written corrective feedback.However,most studies just focus on the role of feedback in the teaching of English writing for senior high school and college students and rarely pay attention to students in junior high school.Moreover,previous studies on the effects of corrective feedback types are still controversial.Therefore,this study aimed at exploring the effects of direct and indirect corrective feedback on students’ writing in junior high school and investigating students’ attitudes towards teachers’ written corrective feedback.This study randomly selected sixty-seven students from Grade Nine in Anmenkou junior high school of Kang County as the research participants.Through ten weeks of writing experiment,pre-test,post-test,and students’ feedback questionnaires are used as tools to collect data.By analyzing the valid data collected with SPSS 23.0,this study draws the following conclusions:(1)On the whole,both the direct and indirect written corrective feedback have positive effects on the improvement of students’ English writing achievements in junior high school.(2)The two types of written corrective feedback have different effects on the five components(i.e.,content,organization,vocabulary,language use,and mechanics).Direct written corrective feedback helps students make improvements significantly in the content and organization.In terms of vocabulary and language use,indirect written corrective feedback promotes students to make more efforts in reflecting and deepening the understanding of vocabulary and language use knowledge,so as to cultivate their integrating skills of using the English language.Regarding mechanics,direct written corrective feedback is more effective.(3)Generally,students hold a positive attitude towards teachers’ written corrective feedback in junior high school.Students believe that teachers’ corrective feedback can not only make them notice their own mistakes but also help them to make self-correction.The results of this study have a certain reference significance for English teachers in junior high school on how to provide written feedback for students’ English writing.Students’ individual differences and preferences should be fully taken into consideration when teachers provide feedback in order to help students improve their English writing performance.