A Study On Teachers’ Feedback In Senior High School English Summary Writing Teaching

With the higher requirements for students’ writing ability listed in the New English Curriculum Standard（2017 ed）,summary writing,as an integrated readingwriting task,is now one part of the college entrance examination in Shanghai,which arouses attention in the teaching of summary writing in high school.Since teachers are vital feedback providers for students’ summary writing,it is of great significance to study teachers’ feedback mode and current feedback situation in high school English summary writing teaching.This study invetstigates Shanghai high school English teachers’ beliefs in summary writing feedback,specifically aiming to answer the following research questions: 1)What are high school English teachers’ beliefs in summary writing feedback,especially in terms of the feedback provider,the interval of giving feedback,as well as the extent,focus and types of the feedback? 2)What are the actual behaviors in high school teachers’ summary writing feedback-giving process? 3)Do high school English teachers’ beliefs in summary writing feedback correspond to their actual behaviors? If not,what could be the reasons? The data were collected by using mixed-type questionnaire and interview.Both the questionnaire and the interview are composed of four parts,regarding the teachers’ personal information,their beliefs in summary writing feedback,their actual feedback behaviors,and the factors that shape the beliefs teachers may hold on.With the core concepts defined and therotical basis clarified,a framework of feedback focus and feedback types in English summary writing are construsted based on literature review.With reference to previous research on the feedback mode of English teachers,the interview outline is also constructed.In this study,192 senior high school English teacher in Shanghai are surveyed,among which 6 teachers with different teaching background and teaching experience are chosen as interviewees.In addition to surveys and interviews,105 samples of students’ summary writings are collected for further analysis based on the framework of feedback focus and types.The research findings indicate that most of the senior high school English teachers in Shanghai are aware of the importance of student engagement in the feedback process,but teachers are still the dominant feedback providers.Secondly,teachers are mostly test-oriented when giving feedback,focusing more on the students’ summarization of the content in the original text while paying less attention to students’ problems in summarizing the structure of the original text and sorting out its logic.Thirdly,although teachers believe that focused feedback is more effective,they use more unfocused feedback in reality.In addition,teachers recognize the importance of giving positive feedback and do so in reality.However,while teachers prefer direct corrective feedback,they choose to use more indirect feedback in their actual feedback-giving process.Finally,although teachers agreed on the significance of feedback,they still had doubts about the effectiveness of feedback in practice.The discrepancies between these perceptions and actual behaviors were due to factors such as workload,teaching experience and students’ attitudes on teachers’ actual feedback behaviors.After analyzing these problems and causes,the following suggestions are put forward.First,it is advised that students should also take active parts in giving feedback to stimulate their learning initiatives;Second,teachers should change their existing misbeliefs regarding summary writing feedback;Third,teachers should be guided to tailor their feedback focus to different teaching stages,and take students’ long-term development of integrated writing ability into account.