A Study On The Present Practice Of Teachers’ Written Feedback On Students’ English Compositions In Senior High Schools

The New English Curriculum Standards for Senior High Schools(2017)puts forward requirements for listening,speaking,reading and writing ability of senior high school students.Writing,as one of the four basic language abilities,plays an important role in senior high school students’ English learning.In addition,as an important part in various examinations,writing is also a necessary language output skill for students and an important means for senior high school students to communicate with others.Thus,the importance of English writing in senior high school English teaching is self-evident.Since process writing is introduced into writing teaching in 1960s and 1970s.English written feedback,as the main means of evaluating students’ English writing level,has always been an important and necessary part of English writing.However,many studies conducted by scholars at home and abroad and surveys conducted in senior high schools show that compared with the other three language skills,writing has not been paid enough attention to by teachers and students.Similarly,written feedback is not fully used in the current high school English writing teaching.Based on the process writing theory,attention hypothesis and interaction hypothesis of second language acquisition,the thesis investigates the status of written feedback in senior high school English teaching through questionnaire survey,interview and language materials collection of students and teachers in Zhangjiakou No.1 Senior High School.The attitude,expectation and confusion of teachers and students are explored in the thesis.In this research,the following questions are explored:(1)What is the current situation of written feedback in senior high school English writing?(2)What are teachers’ and students’ views and expectations on written feedback?(3)What problems exist in the written feedback of senior high school English writing and what are the solutions?Starting from the research questions,questionnaires of teachers and students have been conducted among 40 teachers and 256 students from Zhangjiakou No.1 senior high School.And in-depth interviews have been done with 8 teachers and 10 students.Besides,in order to ensure the authenticity,the research collects 60 language materials of students for analysis.All the collected language materials come from students’ daily compositions or test compositions,which can objectively reflect the current situation of teachers’ written feedback in senior high school.The results show that most of the teachers and students are not satisfied with the current situation of written feedback in English writing,and the effect of written feedback in English writing is limited.Both teachers and students hope that the current situation of written feedback in English writing can be changed and written feedback can be effective.Students hope to get more comprehensive feedback from teachers.Most students hope to get specific suggestions from teachers.In terms of teachers,most of the teachers hope to have a more efficient way of written feedback.Teachers hope that time and energy consumption of written feedback,as well as students’ lacking of motivation to modify can be improved.Combined with the actual situation,the thesis puts forward some suggestions for improving the written feedback of English writing.Firstly,teachers and students of senior high schools should keep positive attitudes towards English writing and written feedback,which includes teachers strengthening the requirements of written feedback and students paying more attention to the teachers’ written feedback.Secondly,teachers are expected to give more comprehensive and detailed written feedback to students,which includes guiding suggestions to students’ compositions and teachers pay more attention to the comprehensiveness of the content.Thirdly,teachers can improve the efficiency of written feedback by reducing the frequency of written feedback and using specific concise symbols.Fourthly,it is advisable for teachers to use multiple methods of feedback.Multiple methods can be used to improve students’ enthusiasm to English writing and their writing level.Finally,teachers should adopt appropriate feedback according to the different characteristics of students’ compositions.