The students’ attitudes towards teachers’ written feedback strategies on their writings at Vocational College of Posts and Telecommunications

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

LÊ HẢI ĐOÀN

THE STUDENTS’ATTITUDES TOWARDS TEACHERS’WRITTEN
FEEDBACK STRATEGIES ON THEIR WRITINGS AT VOCATIONAL
COLLEGE OF POSTS AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS
(Thái độ của sinh viên đối với cách thức phản hồi dưới dạng viết của giáo viên
trên bài viết của sinh viên trường Cao đẳng nghề Bưu Chính Viễn Thông)

M.A. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology
Code: 60140111

HANOI – 2016


VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

LÊ HẢI ĐOÀN

THE STUDENTS’ATTITUDES TOWARDS TEACHERS’WRITTEN
FEEDBACK STRATEGIES ON THEIR WRITINGS AT VOCATIONAL
COLLEGE OF POSTS AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS
(Thái độ của sinh viên đối với cách thức phản hồi dưới dạng viết của giáo viên
trên bài viết của sinh viên trường Cao đẳng nghề Bưu Chính Viễn Thông)

M.A. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology
Code: 60140111
Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Lê Hùng Tiến

HANOI - 2016


DECLARATION

I, Lê Hải Đoàn, hereby declare that this thesis is my own work, and I have
provided fully documented references to the work of others. In addition, this thesis
has not been submitted for assessment in other formal courses in any other
university. I also accept all the requirements of ULIS relating to the retention and
use of M.A Graduation Thesis deposited in the library.

Hanoi, 2016

Lê Hải Đoàn

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First of all, I would like to express my sincere thanks to Associate Professor,
Doctor Le Hung Tien, for the support, guidance and valuable critical feedback. His
help, stimulating suggestion and encouragement helped me a lot right from the

beginning to the end of this study.

I would like acknowledge my thanks to the students at Vocational College of
Posts and Telecommunications in Hanoi who helped me a lot and showed great
willingness to take part in my survey.

My special thanks also go to my lecturers, my friends, my classmates for
valuable comments and criticism, their interest and encouragement.

Last but not least, I want to express my deepest gratitude to my parents and
friends for their love, care, tolerance and encouragement.

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ABSTRACT

This study investigates the students’ attitudes towards teachers’ written
feedback at Vocational College of Posts and Telecommunications in Hanoi. The
participants included 80 non-English major freshmen. The data were collected from
survey questionnaire and the interview with 12 students at different level of English
proficiency. The results show that the students highly valued the importance of
teacher’s feedback and had different attitudes towards each type of them; especially
they prefer direct feedback to the others. It is suggested that the use of direct should
be maintained regularly, so as to not only satisfy student’s interests on writing, but
also improve students’ writing fluency by practicing writing. In terms of the
students’ comprehension of teacher written feedback, the results show that most of
them had difficulty in understanding uncoded and content feedback. Based on their
responses about the ways they deal with the feedback, they are divided into two
groups: independent students who themselves tried to understand teacher written

feedback through books or internet and dependent students who asked their teacher
or friends for help. Thus, it is expected that the research results can provide EFL
writing teachers with pedagogical implications to improve EFL students’ writing
performance.

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PART 1: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale of the study
“What is the shortest word in the English language that contains the letters: abcdef?
Answer: Feedback. Don't forget that feedback is one of the essential elements of
good communication.” (Anonymous)
English writing, going with global development, has become an important
instrument for students to get better jobs. Advice, evaluation, grades - none of these
may give the descriptive information that students need to reach their goals in
writing. Moreover, marking student’ writing is always considered one of the most
difficult tasks for an English teacher. After receiving students’ written work, teacher
starts correcting errors, rearranging word order, leaving comments and eventually
giving the mark. Some researchers in writing (Leki, 1991; Raimes, 1983) have
belief in that giving feedback is one of the important methods for teachers to help
the student writers improve their writing pieces. Up to now, feedback used in
educational context is considered as an essential part of the teaching and learning
process to improve knowledge and skill acquisition. Although many studies have
been written on the subject of error correction in writing and the question about its’
effectiveness is open-ended, we have to admit that students want feedback and
teachers feel obliged to provide it. Moreover, many studies give more attention to
the importance of feedback, the ways of providing and receiving feedback and how
feedback has effect on students’ writing. We can see in the study of Lee (2005),
Noora (2006).“What have been neglected in those studies are preferences and

attitudes of the learners and teachers towards error correction” (Katayama,2007).
He also stated:“ Differences in learners” learning styles affected the learning
environment by either supporting or inhibiting their intentional cognition and active
engagement”. In addition, “matching the learning styles of the students and the
teaching style of the teacher would help improve students’ learning, attitudes,
behavior, and motivation” (Ferris, 2003).

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Also, a large number of studies on feedback types have been carried out; however, a
few ones pay attention to the ways the students deal with the errors after receiving
feedback from their teachers. It can be seen in some previous studies investigated
the effects of different types of feedback on grammatical improvement in students’
writing (Fathman & Walley,1990; Padgate,1999; Hyland,2003) or surveyed
students’ preferences for error correction (Cohen, 1987; Leki, 1991; Ferris, 2006).
Therefore, it is crucial to find out the feedback through which students prefer
receiving, their attitudes towards, their comprehension of and their attention to
different types of teacher written feedback. It is hoped that the results of this study
would help teachers to be more effective in teaching English.
2. Aims of the study
The aim of the present study is to examine the students’ attitudes towards teachers’
written feedback strategies. Moreover, the study aims to find out whether the
students understand the written feedback as intended by their teacher. Finally, the
study aims to find out the students’ strategies for handling feedback after they
received their writings.
3. Research questions
To achieve the purposes of the study, the following questions were developed:
1. What are the students’ attitudes towards teacher’ written feedback strategies?
2. To what extent do the students understand teacher written feedback?

3. How do the students handle the feedback they receive?
4. Significance of the study
Feedback is an essential component of any English language writing course that
second language students expect to receive. It is necessary in the students’ whole
writing process. There exists a conflict between teacher written feedback on
compositions and the learner’s interest. This mismatch between the needs of the
students and those of the teachers can affect the practical effectiveness of the
written feedback.

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