AN INVESTIGATION INTO TEACHER FEEDBACKS ON 11TH GRADER’S WRITING PERFORMANCE

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
VINH UNIVERSITY

LE PHUONG THAO

AN INVESTIGATION INTO TEACHER FEEDBACKS
ON 11TH GRADER’S WRITING PERFORMANCE

Field: Theory and Methodology of English Language Teaching
Code: 60.14.01.11

MASTER’S THESIS IN EDUCATION

Supervisor: Dr. Nguyen Thi Kim Anh

Nghe An, 2017


i
STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP
I hereby acknowledge that this study is my own work. The data and
findings discussed in the thesis are true, used with permission, and have not
been published elsewhere.
Author

Le Phuong Thao


ii
ABSTRACT
Although teacher feedback to students’ writing plays an important role in

teaching and learning writing, both teachers and students at high school do not
pay much attention to this problem. To get much more information about this
reality, the researcher make an effort to investigate into teacher feedbacks on 11 th
grader’s writing performance at Nghe An No 2. Boarding Ethnic high school.
This thesis is implemented with co-operation of 50 students and 4 teachers of
English with

the combination

of

some survey instruments.

Firstly,

questionnaires were delivered for students and teachers. Next, an interview with
a list of questions was carried out between the researcher and the other teachers.
After that, some samples from students’ writing drafts were collected and
analyzed. These sources of data collection will provide new insights into
teachers’ feedback giving practice. The findings of the study revealed that there
existed a lot of problems concerning teachers’ responding methods, their
feedback focus, their frequent types and forms as well as their help for students’
comprehension of teacher feedback. The results also showed the misfit between
what the teachers often give, what the students would like to get as well as give
out some solutions for the giving teacher feedback on students’ writing with the
hope to help the teachers and students to change the current condition and make
students to be more and more interested in writing skill.


iii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I gratefully acknowledge the encouragement and support of many
individuals in assisting me to accomplish this study.
First of all, I would like to express my deepest thanks to my supervisor
Dr. Nguyen Thi Kim Anh, whose useful instructions and advice, as well as
detailed critical comments and encouragements help me a great deal from the
beginning to the end of the thesis writing process. Without her help, the study
would have never fulfilled.
Additionally, I also would like to thank all the teachers of English and my
students at Nghe An No 2. Boarding Ethnic high school who help me much to
collect the important data for the research.
Finally, my special thanks also go to my lecturers, my friends, my
classmates and especially my beloved family for valuable comments and
criticism, their interest and encouragement.


iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP.................................................................................
ABSTRACT..................................................................................................................
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.........................................................................................
Page

iv

LIST OF CHARTS......................................................................................................
Page

vi

LIST OF ABBRIVIATIONS.....................................................................................
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION.................................................................................

1.1. Rationale.....................................................................................................1
1.2. Aims of the study........................................................................................2
1.3. Scope of the study......................................................................................3
1.4. Methods of the study..................................................................................3
1.5. Research questions.....................................................................................3
1.6. Design of the study.....................................................................................4
4
4
CHAPTER 2: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND........................................................

2.1. Writing........................................................................................................5
2.1.1. Definitions of writing..........................................................................5
2.1.2. Types of writing...................................................................................7
2.1.3. The importance of writing...................................................................8
2.1.4. The importance of writing skill to students of high school.................9
2.1.5. Teaching Writing...............................................................................10
2.2. Feedback...................................................................................................12
2.2.1. Definitions of feedback.....................................................................12
2.2.2. The importance of feedback..............................................................14
2.2.3. Strategies for writing feedback..........................................................17
2.2.4. Approaches to feedback giving.........................................................18
2.2.5. Types of feedback..............................................................................19
2.3. Focus on Teacher Feedback......................................................................23
2.3.1. Forms of teacher feedback.................................................................24
2.3.2. Types of teacher feedback.................................................................25
2.3.3. Issues in the teachers' written feedback.............................................26

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2.3.4. Principles of teacher feedback...........................................................28
2.3.5. Major issues in giving teacher feedback...........................................28
3.1. The context of the study...........................................................................30
3.2. The textbooks...........................................................................................31
3.3. Participants...............................................................................................32
3.4. Instruments for Data Collection...............................................................33
3.4.1. Questionnaire for Students................................................................33
3.4.2. Questionnaire for Teachers................................................................34
3.4.3. Follow-up Interview..........................................................................34
3.4.4. Document analyses of teacher feedback............................................35
3.5. The instruments........................................................................................35
3.6. Data collection methods...........................................................................35
CHAPTER 4: DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS...................................................

4.1. Data analysis.............................................................................................37
4.1.1. Data analysis of questionnaire for students.......................................37
4.1.2. Data analysis of questionnaire for teacher.........................................50
4.1.3. Analysis of the interview...................................................................56
4.1.4. Observation of teacher commentary on the students’ drafts..............59
4.2. Findings and discussion............................................................................60
4.2.1. Findings.............................................................................................61
4.2.2. Discussion..........................................................................................64
CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION....................................................................................

5.1. Conclusion................................................................................................68
The study point out limitations as well as give out some solutions for the
giving teacher feedback on students’ writing with the hope to help the

teachers and students to change the current condition and make students to be
more and more interested in writing skill........................................................68
5.2. Recommendations....................................................................................68
5.3. Suggestions for further studies.................................................................70
REFERENCES............................................................................................................
APPENDIX 1:.............................................................................................................


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LIST OF CHARTS
Page
Figure 4.1 The students’ interest toward writing skill..................................................
Figure 4.2 The students’ attitude towards topics of writing in textbook.......................
Figure 4.3 Amount of time a day students spend on writing........................................
Figure 4.4 The most difficult problem encountered when studying writing skill
.................................................................................................................
Figure 4.5 Things students do before writing..............................................................
Based on figure 4.5, only 13 students (26%) think about the main ideas before
starting to write, 40% of them discuss with friends while 8 of them
(16%) even do nothing, just write naturally. If students do nothing
before writing, they maybe write disorderly and even have nothing
to write. 9 students (18%) get information from Internet or books;
which provide them with a lot of useful information to support for
their writing.............................................................................................
Figure 4.6 The students’ attitude towards the time of studying writing skill in
class.........................................................................................................
Figure 4.7 People who correct students’ writing task...................................................
Figure 4.8. The importance of teacher feedback on students’ writing..........................
Figure 4.9 Students' expectation for frequency of teacher feedback on each
assignment...............................................................................................

Figure 4.10 Students’ expectation for teacher feedback types.....................................
Figure 4.11 Students’ expectation for the focus of teacher feedback...........................
As can be seen from the figure above, 36 students (72%) prefer their teachers
to focus the feedback on grammar. Beside that, about 40 of them
(80%) want the feedback to be focused on vocabulary. It can be
said that most informants prefer more feedback on form rather than
on content (36%) for following reasons. First, the writing lesson at
grade 11 is a kind of guided writing. The learners are provided


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with models, structures even content for writing. The learners’ task
is using suggested information to write a complete paragraph.
However, they do not realize that a good writing paper is not
merely the combination of grammatically correct sentences but it
also reveals the good language use, suitable organization
(including coherence and cohesion) and the unity of topic sentence
and supporting ideas. Second, the data in figure 4.4 show that 36
students (72 %) find vocabulary and grammar are the most difficult
problems when they study. So, students often make these types of
mistakes. The statistics in this chart also indicate that a half of the
students (50%) expect the teacher comment to be focused on
language use, whereas, 21 of them (42%) on styles and 9 (18%) on
idea organization......................................................................................
46
Figure 4.12 Students’ expectation for teachers’ indication of errors in the
writing.....................................................................................................
Figure 4.13 Students’ expectation for teachers’ treatment if there are many
errors in the writing.................................................................................
Figure 4.14 Students’ comprehension of teacher feedback..........................................

Figure 4.15 The reasons for not understanding teacher feedback................................
Figure 4.16 The solutions for the problems.................................................................
Table 4.1 The purpose of teacher’s giving feedback....................................................
Figure 4.17. Frequency of teacher feedback to each assignment.................................
Table 4.2 Frequency of teacher feedback types...........................................................
Table 4.3 Focus of teacher feedback...........................................................................
Figure 4.18 Treatment with errors in the student writing.............................................
Figure 4.19 Teacher’s consideration about students’ comprehension of teacher
feedback...................................................................................................


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LIST OF ABBRIVIATIONS
EFL

:

English as foreign language

ESL

:

English as a secondary language

ETC

:

Et cetera

%

:

percent


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1
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
1.1. Rationale
Language is the means of expressing people’s thoughts, ideas, views and a
medium of communication with the whole world and English is considered as
not only an international language but also a medium of communication in this
age of globalization. In Vietnam, English is a foreign language and is a
compulsory subject at schools. Students are expected to be communicatively
competent in English. Moreover, English plays an important role for people to
find a good job not only in Vietnam but also in many others countries in the
world. It becomes a second language to many people. To use English fluently,
the learners are expected to pay attention to four skills: reading, writing,
listening and speaking. Of four skills, writing seems to be the most difficult skill
to many learners. Different from the rest, this skill requires not only the learners
to have good knowledge of grammar but also plentiful source of vocabulary to
write a good paragraph as well as a complete essay. In writing English, writers
always have to pay attention to such factors as tenses, sentence structures, parts
of speech, conjunctions, and punctuation marks. Thus, this requires much

patience and constant practice. And, the role of teachers in writing lessons, from
guided to free writing tasks cannot be denied. Therefore, helping students
enhance their writing skills is one of the teachers’ responsibilities. However, not
all of the teachers find that it is easy for them to give students corrective
feedback and make their students more interested in writing skill.
It is obvious that one of the most meaningful and important methods of
teaching writing is the use of written feedback. However, during a lesson of
forty five minutes, the teachers hardly have sufficient time to pay attention and
give correction to every student’ writing performance. According to Susan M.
Brookhart (2008), good feedback gives students information they need so they


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can understand where they are in their learning and what to do next- the
cognitive factor. Once they feel they understand what to do and why, most
students develop a feeling that they have control over their own learning - the
motivational factor.
During four years working as a teacher of English at Nghe An No 2.
Boarding Ethnic high school, I see that most of my students encounter a great
number of difficulties in completing a writing task. A majority of them find
writing skills challenging. In each lesson, students are usually asked to write a
paragraph of approximately 100- 120 words based on the topic of the lesson to
revise what they have learnt. Such writings not only help them revise the
vocabulary and grammar but also give them a chance to get used to writing and
expressing ideas in English. However, the students are afraid of writing lessons.
They are not aware of how to arrange ideas in a paragraph, in an essay or even
in a letter. In addition, in English written tests, writing skill has been concerned
with many forms such as: finishing the sentence in such a way that it means the
same as the given sentence, writing a letter, writing an essay… Moreover,
teachers of English have many difficulties in giving written feedback to

students’ writing paper. They do not know how to use effectively teacher
feedbacks in order to improve students’ writing skill.
All of these motivated me to conduct a research titled “An investigation
into teacher feedbacks on 11th grader’s writing performance” with the aim at
improving writing skill of 11th graders students at Nghe An No 2. Boarding
Ethnic high school.
1.2. Aims of the study
This study is designed to obtain the two primary aims:
- Investigate teacher feedbacks given to 11 th form students’ writings: their
responding method, the feedback focus, feedback types and forms, as well as


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their problems in responding to the students' writing.
- Propose some recommendations for teachers in order to help students
write more effectively.
1.3. Scope of the study
Feedback in writing is such a broad topic including self-editing, peer
feedback and teacher feedback. Within the framework of thesis, this study
focuses only on the teacher feedback on students’ writing performance at a high
school in Nghe An province. The research is carried out with the hope that the
results of the study will provide significant insights into both what teachers have
actually done as they respond and how the students react to these responses.
This may lead to suggestions for improving teacher feedback and helping the
students to utilize it more successfully in their writing revision.
1.4. Methods of the study
To realize the aims, the following quantitative and qualitative methods
were employed to obtain adequate information for the study.
Firstly, questionnaire for students and teachers were delivered to 50
students from 5 classes of grade 11 and four teachers of English. Next, an

interview with a list of 5 questions was carried out between the researcher and
the other teachers. After that, some samples from students’ writing drafts were
collected and analyzed.
These sources of data collection will provide new insights into teachers’
feedback giving practice and the students’ reactions towards the feedback they
received. On this basis, some measures were applied to improve the teacher
feedback so that the teacher responds to the students’ writing more properly.
1.5. Research questions
This research is designed to investigate teacher feedback techniques
applied for 11th graders at Nghe An No. 2 Boarding Ethnic high school to


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improve and enhance students’ writing skills. In order to achieve the mentioned
aims above, the following research questions will be included in the study:
1. What are students and teachers’ attitudes toward feedback?
2. How do the teachers respond to the students’ writing?
1.6. Design of the study
The study includes 5 chapters:
Chapter 1. Introduction: presents the rationale, aims, method, scope and
design of the study.
Chapter2. Literature review: gives the theoretical background of writing
and giving feedback to students’ writing tasks.
Chapter 3. Methodology: includes the description of Nghe An No 2.
Boarding Ethnic high school context, English textbook and the study (the
instruments, the participants and the research questions).
Chapter 4. Data analysis and findings: describes the data of the
questionnaires and interviews, then gives some findings through the data
analysis.
Chapter 5. Conclusion and Recommendations: suggests some solutions to

the current problems, focuses on the conclusions of the thesis, some limitations
and recommendations for further study.


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CHAPTER 2: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
2.1. Writing
2.1.1. Definitions of writing
A language is used for many kinds of purposes. Thus, it has many
functions as well. Furthermore, there are two macro skills of a language; they
are receptive and productive skills. Writing skill is one of the productive skills
that should be mastered in using a language. It is because writing skill has
significances in improving a communicative competence of learning the
language.
Students learn and acquire language through both written and spoken
ways so that they can improve their communicative competence. In the process
of communication, ideally students know the rules on how to communicate to
others, how to get information, and how to communicate about the language
itself. When the students understand the knowledge of the language, it means
that they have a language competence. In line with this, Brown (2000, p. 31)
states the definition of a language competence as “one’s underlying knowledge
of system of a language its rules of grammar, its vocabulary, and all the pieces of
language and how those pieces fit together”. Furthermore, Bachman (1990, p.
87) divides the language competence into two parts: organization competence
and pragmatic competence. Organization competence is ability to comprehend
and form correct sentences, understand meaning of sentences and pour theses
sentences into a text. Based on this statement, it can be concluded that writing is
one part of the competencies.
The definitions of writing are variously stated by some experts. According
to Rivers (1981, p. 294), writing is conveying information or expression of

original ideas in a consecutive way in the new language. Brown (2001, p. 336)


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also claims that writing is a thinking process. Besides, he states that writing can
be planned and given with an unlimited number of revisions before its release.
In addition, Elbow (1973) in Brown (2001, p. 336) also says that writing is a
two-step process. The first process is figuring out the meaning and the second
process is putting the meaning into language. Writing represents what we think.
It is because the writing process reflects things, which stay in the mind. Students
who are reluctant to write things down often suffer for this activity. The students
find difficulties when they start looking for some reasons to write and producing
written sentences.
Another definition of writing skill is also defined by Urquhart and
McIver. Urquhart and McIver (2005, p. 5-6) state that writing is a recursive
process, which means students revise throughout the process, frequently moving
back and forth among the stages. Then, students should learn strategies for
invention and discovery, and teachers should help students generate content and
discover a purpose. Also, it is stated that readers, purpose, and occasion define
all types of writing and effective writing fulfills the writer’s intention and meets
the readers’ needs. It means that writing is a complex process and it seems
reasonable to expect, then, that the teaching of writing is complex as well.
Moreover, Harmer (2004) states that writing encourages students to focus on
accurate language use. It is because students consider the language use when the
students engage in their writing process. This activity will provoke language
development because the students resolve problems what writing puts in
students’ minds.
Based on the definitions above, a definition of writing skill can be
obtained. Writing is a productive process done through some stages. Firstly,
exploring and transmitting ideas, thought and feeling into written form.

Secondly, conducting a number of revising process carry out a grammatical and


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orderly texts. The writing productions are in the forms of readable texts which
should be meaningful to everyone who reads the writing.
Furthermore, based on those definitions, it can be stated that writing skill
is a complex activity in producing a qualified writing. This complex activity
consists of stages as the steps in writing. To improve students’ writing skill, the
teaching and learning process of writing needs to be done well with developed
input and effective activities. As a result, teachers need to consider the teaching
of writing skill well based on their student’s needs, ability and capacity.
2.1.2. Types of writing
2.1.2.1. Exposition
Exposition is one of four rhetorical modes of discourse, along with
argumentation, description and narration. It is also used for speeches. The
purpose of exposition is to provide some background and inform the readers
about the plot, character, setting and theme of the essay, story or motion picture.
2.1.2.2. Argumentation
Argumentation theory, or argumentation, also called persuasion, is the
interdisciplinary study of how humans should, can, and do reach conclusions
through logical reasoning that is claims based, soundly or not, on premises. It
includes the arts and sciences of civil debate, dialogue, conversation, and
persuasion. It studies rules of inference, logic and procedural rules in both
artificial and real world setting.
Argumentation includes debate and negotiation, which are concerned with
reaching mutually acceptable conclusion. It is used in law, for example in trial,
in preparing an argument to be presented to court, and in testing the validity of
certain kind of evidence.
2.1.2.3. Description

Description is one of four rhetorical modes (also known as modes of
discourse). It is often found in fiction, though it can make an appearance in


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nonfiction as well (for example, memoirs, first-hand accounts of events, or
travel guides). When an author writes in a descriptive style, they are painting a
picture in words of a person, place, or thing for their audience. The author might
employ metaphor or other literary devices in order to describe the author’s
impressions via their five senses (what they hear, see, smell, taste, or touch). But
the author is not trying to convince the audience of anything or explain the scene
- merely describe things as they are.
2.1.2.4. Narration
Narration is some kind of retelling, often in words (though it is possible to
mime a story), of something that happened (a story). Narration recounts events,
perhaps leaving some occurrences out because they are from some perspective
insignificant, and perhaps emphasizing others. Narration thus shapes history (the
scene of events, the story of what happened).
2.1.3. The importance of writing
Mastering writing ability is important since writing is one of the ways to
communicate with other people. The ability to write is required in many parts of
people’s life. Harmer (2004) states that writing is a basic language skill just as
important as speaking, listening, and reading. The ability to write is also
required in many jobs such as writing application letters, business proposal,
reports and memos. So, there are many several ways in writing which are
important in lives:
Firstly, as a contribution to the development of a person, no matter what
the person’s background and talents. Writing is a highly complex act that
demands the analysis and synthesis of many levels of thinking.
Secondly, writing develops the initiative. In reading, everything is

provided. In writing, the learner must supply everything such the right
relationship between sounds and letters, their form on the page, the topic,
information, question and answer.


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Thirdly, writing develops courage. At no point is the learner more
vulnerable than in writing.
In addition, writing, more than any other subject, can lead to personal
breakthroughs in learning.
Moreover, writing can contribute to reading from the first day of school.
Writing, someway, is active, where as reading is passive.
Finally, writing contributes strongly to reading comprehension as children
grow older.
The ability to revise writing to greater power and economy is one of the
higher forms of reading.
2.1.4. The importance of writing skill to students of high school
In the school setting, writing plays two distinct but complementary roles.
First, it is a skill conducts the use of strategies (such as planning, evaluating, and
revising text) to accomplish a variety of goals, such as writing a report or
expressing an opinion with the support of evidence. Second, writing is a mean of
extending and deepening student’s knowledge; it acts as a tool for learning
subject matter (Sperling & Freedman, 2001). Writing is one of the ways to
transmit thoughts or ideas to the other people. Writing is also the important skill
in studying English, which need great investment from the students. Many
students in high school are not aware of the importance of writing, so they only
spend a certain amount of time on it. It is not true because being good at writing
can help them study other skills in English more effectively. Besides that,
practicing writing skill will help students get acquainted with new types of
writing as well as consolidate their writing skill. For example, students study

writing skill from low to high, from basic to advance. At grade 10, students
mainly study writing one paragraph or a small part in essay. It provides students
some background knowledge before studying writing tasks at 11th grade.
Similarly, writing tasks in 11th grade will prepare students essential skills to help


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them write well at higher level of 12 th grade. 11th grade writing tasks play an
important role because students are well-prepared with grammar points, content,
vocabulary, and especially techniques and skills to write a paragraph or essay
before they study carefully at 12th grade.
Nowadays, writing is also the key to success in college and university.
Most contexts of life (school, the workplace, and the community) call for some
level of writing skill, and each context makes overlapping, but not identical,
demands proficient writers adapt their writing flexibly to the context in which it
takes place. Otherwise, almost colleges or universities require their students to
get foreign language certificates for graduated qualification, and writing is
indispensable in these exams. Being good at writing can ensure students a good
job. At present, many foreign companies need people with high writing skill
level to be responsible for writing contracts or documents in English.
2.1.5. Teaching Writing
Writing skill is one of language skills which are taught to students. Also,
writing skill determines the students’ communicative competence in English.
Teaching how to write effectively is one of the most important life-long skills
teachers impart to their students. When teaching writing, the teachers must be
sure to select resources and support materials that not only aid them in teaching
how to write, but that will also be the most effective in helping their students
learn to write. So, on the functional level, students are able to communicate
adequately both in the spoken and written form to complete daily activities.
Moreover, students are able to create some monologue short functional texts and

essays in the form of procedure, descriptive, recount, narrative, and report. The
other target on the functional level is students can develop their linguistic
competence (using grammar and vocabularies).
A writing process is a complicated process, because the writing process
needs cognitive abilities in recognizing some segments of languages to produce


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a qualified writing. In general, writing process is done through two stages:
exploring ideas and processing the ideas into readable texts. Rivers (1981, p.
294) claims that writing in the language becomes a complicated activity because
writing involves meaningful segments of language: words, sentence, grammar,
and how to transfer those segments into written forms.
Objectives of the teaching of writing skill can be achieved through some
approaches. According to Harmer (2001), there are two approaches in teaching
writing. They are focusing on the product of writing process and focusing on the
writing process itself. He states that focusing on the writing process leads those
who advocate a process approach in writing. However, teachers have to pay
attention to the various stages of any piece of writing process.
The writing approaches, including a process approach, are applied to get
the objectives of study in writing skill. They enable students to understand the
materials and help them to express their ideas grammatically and orderly in
English. In addition, Nunan (1991) says that a process approach in writing sees
the act of composition from a different perspective, or focusing as much on
itself. He also states that the process approach focuses on the steps involving
drafting and redrafting a piece of work. In other words, on this process
approach, the important one is not only in the product, but also in the writing
process. Therefore, the process approach can be developed through writing
practices routinely with effective activities also a better input to improve the
students’ writing skill.

A writing process is done through some stages. On each stage, students
engage in a certain activity to construct their writing. Furthermore, Richard and
Renandya (2002, p. 303) state that the process of writing consists of planning,
drafting, revising and editing. On the planning stage, the students are
encouraged to write. The drafting stage is focusing on the fluency of writing and


12
is not pre-occupied with grammatical accuracy or the neatness of the draft. Next,
on the revising stage, the students re-write their text on the basis of feedback
given in a responding stage. The students, on editing stage, are engaged in
tidying up their texts as they prepare the final draft for evaluation by the
teachers.
2.2. Feedback
2.2.1. Definitions of feedback
As far from now, responding to student writing, including giving
feedback, is one of the most controversial topics in second language instruction
and theory. As the importance of feedback, it is considered a fundamental
element of a process approach to writing. Therefore, there have been attempts to
define the term “feedback”.
Various researchers define the term “feedback” in different ways, among
which the one put forward by Keh (1990) is one of the most comprehensive.
Keh considers feedback as “any input from a reader to a writer with the effect of
providing information to the writer for revision”. In other words, when giving
feedback, the reader gives the writer comments, questions and suggestions with
an aim to help him/her revise the writing. Through feedback, the writer may
learn the reader’s confusion caused by the writer’s insufficient information,
illogical organization, poor development of ideas, or even inaccurate usage and
choice of words and tense. Students are motivated to continue a series of
revisions especially through positive feedback. According to Chaudron (1984),

feedback which is contrasted with the narrower notion of correction is therefore
“an evitable constituent of classroom interaction” and “from the teacher’s point
of view, the provision of feedback is a major means by which to inform learners
of their accuracy of both their formal target language production and their
classroom behavior and knowledge”.


13
Feedback is probably the best-tested principle in psychology. It is the
most effective method when it is timely, perceived as relevant, meaningful and
encouraging, and offers suggestions for improvement that are within a student’s
grasp ( Brown, Bull & Pendlebury, 1997)
Feedback is any response made in relation to students’ work such as an
assessment task, a performance or product. It can be given by a teacher, an
external assessor or a student peer. It is usually spoken or written.
Thus, feedback can be considered as an effective means to communicate
to the students about their writing. Through feedback, the student knows
whether he or she has misled or confused the reader by not supplying sufficient
information, illogical organization, lack of development of ideas, or something
like inappropriate word-choice or tense (Keh, 1990).
However, this information is much more helpful if it is provided on
preliminary and intermediate stage, rather than on the final one. Seow (2002)
claims that feedback is regarded as teacher’s quick initial reaction to the
students’ drafts. Added to this, Richards and Rynandya (2002) state that if
students write only one draft which is then graded by the teacher, feedback on
what is wrong in the composition comes too late. This means feedback should
be provided in the process of writing rather than in single act of producing a text
as Raimes (1983) notes, “Responding to students’ writing is very much a part of
the process of teaching writing”. That means feedback is very necessary for the
success of the writing. According to Susan M. Brookhark (2008), writing good

feedback requires an understanding that language does more than describe our
world, it helps us construct our world. R. Douglas (2007) supposes that effective
feedback not only tells students how they perform, but how to improve the next
time they engage the task. Effective feedback is provided in such a timely
manner that the next opportunity to perform the task is measured in seconds, not


14
weeks or months.
2.2.2. The importance of feedback
A number of studies on this aspect have been done and a debate about the
value of providing feedback on L2 writing has been prominent in recent years.
According to Taylor (1997, p.65) “feedback is an area which causes
students considerable anxiety” and there is a need for great care to be taken in
relation to issues as timing, location, participation, attitudes, outcomes and so
on. Also, Truscott (1996), based on their respective reviews of the literature,
stated that substantial research evidence suggests that correction of surface level
errors is futile and may not be worth the instructor’s time and effort. Truscott
(2004) even concluded that this type of correction should be abandoned in
second language writing classes because it can have harmful effect. This point of
view is shared by other studies in various second language contexts
investigating the effect of different types of feedback on student writing skill in
the case that explicit error correction seems to be generally ineffective.
However, there have been a number of the researchers who support the
importance of feedback in teaching English as a second language. They believe in
giving corrective feedback to students to improve their written accuracy. In Schulz
(1996) students’ beliefs about what constitutes effective feedback on writing and
their expectations regarding teacher paper-making techniques may influence the
effectiveness of such feedback. Hedge (2000, p.13) shared an agreement in the case
that “getting feedback from the teacher and from other students in the class enables

learners to test hypothesis and refine their developing knowledge of the language
system.”. In this case, good feedback not only stimulates students for revision but
also motivates them to maintain their interest in writing. In addition, provision of
comments helps individualize writing instructions in which students will be able to
get individual attention to have their own needs or problems rightfully addressed


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(Reid, 1993). In this way, feedback is an important step towards the learner
centeredness.
2.2.2.1. Feedback is integral to formative assessment
Feedback on performance, when effective, is widely considered to be
integral to learning. People learn faster and more deeply if they know what the
strengths and weaknesses of their performance are and most importantly, how to
improve future performance.
One of the most valuable contributions anyone can make to another
person’s learning is constructive feedback. As a student or as a teacher, each of
us has the capacity to provide useful information to other people, which will
help them to learn more effectively. This potential to influence future
performance is known as feed forward. In order to generate feed forward,
feedback must not only identify the learner gap between actual and desired
performance (by indicating the standard achieved on any given criterion for
example) but also provide information needed to close that gap. It is this
additional information which is so important in making assessment formative.
What’s more, when specific guidance is provided to close the gap, the feed
forward effect is even greater and the focus of feedback quickly becomes
learning rather than marks.
2.2.2.2. Feedback produces learner autonomy
One of the most valuable aspects of effective feedback is its ability to
foster learner autonomy. Students tend to become self regulated learners when

they are provided with detailed feedback on performance as well as guidance for
future improvement. Evidence of this self-regulatory process can be seen in an
increasing ability to align aspects of thinking, motivation and behavior with
assessment criteria, standards and learning outcomes as well as learning goals
established by the learners themselves.