The Impact of Feedback on EFL College Students' Revising Process

• Main Authors: Yen-Ling Liu, 劉彥伶
• Other Authors: Tung-Hsien He
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2010
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/15034544173364955294

碩士 === 國立臺北教育大學 === 兒童英語教育學系碩士班 === 98 === The study aimed to examine EFL learners’ revising process, and three aspects were under inspection: 1) types of revision changes in response to teacher’s feedback, 2) reasons for following teacher’s feedback and 3) reasons for not following teacher’s feedback. Eight students participated in the study from September 2009 to January 2010. Data collected through writing samples, recording and interview. Writing samples and recording were gathered to examine consistency and inconsistency between student’s revision and teacher’s feedback; interview was conducted to probe reasons for following and not following the feedback. The findings were listed as follows: 1.Adapting from Faigley and Witte’s (1981) taxonomy, changes in response to teacher’s feedback examined in terms of meaning-preserving change, microstructure change and macrostructure change. Types of addition, deletion and substitution were reported in meaning-preserving change; types of addition, deletion, substitution, distribution, consolidation and reordering were found in microstructure change; type of substitution was found in macrostructure change. 2.Investigation upon reasons for following teacher’s feedback focused on (1) meaning-preserving change. Firstly, indirect feedback with valuable response and direct feedback reception were reported form revisions of addition. Secondly, conformity to direct feedback brought about deletion. Thirdly, substitution at word level resulted from teacher’s direct answer and from participant’s awareness; substitution at phrasal level resulted from teacher’s explanation and from a compromise to teacher’s authority. (2) Microstructure change. Firstly, meaningfully teacher-student interaction led to effective addition while authority maintenance over draft also caused addition success. Secondly, individual interpretation towards feedback induced effective distribution while overgeneralization to feedback was found for successful distribution. Thirdly, consolidation was made by obeying teacher’s demonstration and explanation. 3.Reasons for not following teacher’s feedback were examined at levels of word, sentence, inter-sentence and paraphrase. Firstly, unskillful use of the dictionary, inattention to feedback and incomprehension to the teacher’s feedback were reasons for feedback-revision inconsistency at word level. Secondly, incoherent information and L1 interference would be reasons for inconsistency at sentence level. Thirdly, unawareness to logical presentation in the process of revision, unawareness to coherence and incomprehension to a general direction might be sources for inconsistency at intersentential level. Last, type of revision and little negotiation were possible reasons for inconsistency at paragraph level. Except for unsuccessful revision, one successful revision without following teacher’s feedback at word level was reported due to awareness to appropriate word choice.