VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES & HUMANITIES ·¸¹º ERROR FEEDBACK IN L2 WRITING CLASSES: HOW EXPLICIT DOES IT NEED TO BE? Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts (TESOL) NGUYEN BA CHINH Supervisor NGUYEN THI KIM THU, M.A Ho Chi Minh City, Fall 2002 CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY I hereby certify my authorship of the thesis submitted today entitled: ERROR FEEDBACK IN L2 WRITING CLASSES: HOW EXPLICIT DOES IT NEED TO BE? in terms of the statement of Requirements for Theses & Field Study Reports in Master’s Programs issued by the Higher Degree Committee. Ho Chi Minh City, September 30, 2002 NGUYEN BA CHINH i RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS I hereby state that I, NGUYEN BA CHINH, being the candidate for the degree of Master of Arts (TESOL), accept the requirements of the University relating to the retention and use of Master’s Theses deposited in the University Library. In terms of these conditions, I agree that the original of my thesis deposited in the University library should be accessible for the purposes of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the Library for care, loan or reproduction of theses. Ho Chi Minh City, September 30, 2002 NGUYEN BA CHINH ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS When I was just having an idea about the thesis a year ago, a friend of mine, who has been a college teacher of English asked me if I knew what I was getting myself into.
I replied that I was fully aware and that I knew it would be hard. I had no idea. Working more or less full-time at the same time as doing course works for the Master’s only adds to the stress and makes the thanks I express here even more heartfelt. Writing a thesis is an intensely lonely and challenging experience, but at the same time it can only be done with the help and co-operation of a large number of people.
All these people now deserve a special mention. First mention must go to my supervisor, Nguyen Thi Kim Thu, whose belief in me from our first meetings through to this Master’s has given me the lift and encouragement I needed to get it done. Acknowledgements sections are often full of phrases such as ‘without whom’ but in this case it is true. Without Nguyen Thi Kim Thu this work would not have been done.
Similar thanks must also go to my present bosses, Hoang Van Chau, Vice-Rector, Director ; Mai Quoc Doanh, Vice-Director; and Le Hong Linh, Head of English Department of the University of Foreign Trade, branch II in Ho Chi Minh City, whose understanding of this work and my desire to do it have enabled me to use both school time and resources in order to get it finished. This work has gone through several phases and two incidents have been central to its development. It was started off by comments made to me by teacher fellows’ comments on error feedback in teaching writing at FTU. The fact that I did not have a satisfactory reply to the point forced me into a thinking process that resulted in this thesis.
Next came a personal conversation with Nguyen Thi Hong Tham on error feedback. My thanks also go to all two for their insights and advice. iii I would like to thank all those who allowed themselves to be interviewed/ surveyed for the interview sessions & the survey. Thanks must also go to my colleagues and students at the Foreign Trade University who agree to be a part of the questionnaires.
It has helped a great deal. Finally, thanks must go to my family, my mother, father and sister who, as often seems to be the case, have borne the brunt of the hard times and for their love and support. I would like to dedicate this thesis to my mother, father and sister. ·¸¹º iv ABSTRACT This action study investigated the current teachers’practices in giving error feedbacks to second-year and third-year students’ writing at Foreign Trade University, Branch II in Ho Chi Minh City (FTU), the students' perception of error feedback from their teachers, their perception of error feedback alternatives on writing in EFL writing in L2 context to enhance students’ ability to write effectively.
The survey respondents included 150 students from 19-22 years old at FTU, with an ESL level of intermediate to upper-intermediate and 15 teachers at the institution. The data from questionnaires and students' comments indicated: 1. a shift in students' priorities from traditional teachers’ writing feedback to a more involving methods like peer-feedback and self-feedback, 2. the students’ questions on the reasons why they were wrong, not why the teacher was right in the traditional teachers’ feedbacks, the students’ trust in their teachers’ answer but such feedback seems unable to challenge them to try new things.
On the teacher side, the findings indicated disparity between theory and practice. Teachers are generally aware of current trends such as applying peer-feedback and self-feedback, but an analysis of their comments presented a continuing preoccupation with grammar. A complex interplay of factors may have accounted for this, such as school policy, role perception, pressure of an examination-oriented education system and heavy workload. Even though the teachers express a desire for more teacher- student conferencing in the feedback process, they see it mainly as a means of giving students individual help on grammar.
Changing such deep-rooted belief and habit requires the concerted efforts and support of all parties concerned, including the government, teacher educators, school authority and the community at large. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Certificate of originality i Retention and use of the thesis ii Acknowledgements iii Abstract v Table of content vi List of table vii Abbreviations & symbols x INTRODUCTION 1. Aims and overview of the thesis. 3 Chapter 1 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY 1.1 The importance of teaching writing at Foreign Trade University (FTU).2 Description of writing textbook and syllabus at FTU.
8 Chapter 2 LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 The importance of error feedback in L2 writing to students of English.2 Teachers’ feedback in L2 writing .3 Alternatives to teachers’ feedback in L2 writing.1 Peers’ feedback in L2 writing .2 Self-feedback in L2 writing .1 Types of conferencing.2 Merits and challenges of conferencing .4 Disadvantages of conferencing .1 Subjects of the study.1 Questionnaire to students .2 Questionnaire to teachers. 44 Chapter 4 DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS 4.1 Students with traditional teachers’ feedback. 60 Chapter 5 IMPLICATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 5.1Creating an environment for error feedback .2Peer-feedback activities.3 Self-feedback activities .2 Word processing tools .3 Email/ e-groups use in writing class. 84 Bibliography Appendix 1 Student questionnaire Appendix 2 Teacher questionnaire Appendix 3 Piloted study viii LIST OF TABLES & CHARTS Table 1: what students do after receiving and reading their teachers’ traditional feedback on first drafts.
46 Table 2: what students do after receiving and reading their teachers’ traditional feedback on final drafts. 47 Table 3: what students do with mistakes that they do not understand. 48 Table 4: Effects of teachers’ feedbacks. 49 Table 5: What students do with their errors.
50 Chart 6: Types of feedback students receive. 52 Table 7: Types of conferencing activities. 54 Table 8: what teachers do when giving feedbacks to students. 57 Table 9: Level of use amongst types of feedbacks.
58 ix ABBREVIATIONS & SYMBOLS FTU : Foreign Trade University L2 : Second language EFL : English as Foreign Language ESL : English as Second Language TESOL: Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages OUP : Oxford University Press CUP : Cambridge University Press x Introduction INTRODUCTION The thesis is to report the results of surveys, interviews, observations conducted to investigate error feedback in L2 writing for second-year and third-year classes at the Foreign Trade University (FTU), Branch II, in Ho Chi Minh City, with a purpose to survey the current practices of error feedback in order to facilitate, improve and maximize students’ ability to communicate in writing effectively. This introduction presents the problem, the aims of the study and an overview of the thesis.1 THE PROBLEM The following descriptive excerpt, entitled “Portrait of the English Teacher as a Tired Dog,” for teachers of writing: “It is a November midnight, Johnny Carson has just ended, and throughout the block the last lights flick off—all but one that is. A single orange light blooms in the darkness. It is the English teacher, weary-eyed, cramped of leg, hand, and brain, sifting listlessly, but doggedly through piles of themes, circling, marking, grading, commenting, guilt-ridden because the students were promised that the papers would be returned last week.
The fifth cup of coffee grows cold and bitter. Just one more paper. And then one more, And then. The fact that writing teachers spend a considerable amount of time responding to their students’ writing papers is a reality.
According to one estimate (Sommers, 1982), teachers of English take at least 20 to 40 minutes to comment on an individual paper. 1 Introduction Some anecdotal evidence suggests that we all invest a great proportion of our instructional time responding to our students’ writings. “Whenever EFL writing students have turned in their compositions to me, I have felt a rush of mixed emotions: excitement at the prospect of reading their ideas, but at the same time utter dread of the enormous task of dealing with all those errors! I usually start out with good intentions of focusing primarily on the students’ message and attending to only the “most important” errors; but all too often, I end up plowing through each paper, systematically circling, crossing out, putting brackets around, and/or revising every usage error I find,” said Ms. Le Hong Linh, a Vietnamese EFL teacher at FTU.
A few days later, the students get back a paper “of a different ink color from what they originally wrote,” (according to her students). They read through the corrected paper once, making mental note of the errors, (with or without understanding; to be filed in short-term memory), and then put away (or throw away?) that completed venture, ready to try their luck again at the next writing assignment. My colleagues at FTU, Branch II in Ho Chi Minh City then pose the question, “Is anything really gained by the experience?” Their own answer and mine to this question, after we examined both their responses and their effect on student writing, was an unqualified no. This corroborates the findings of other research, which makes clear the insignificant effects of teachers’ responses (see, for example, Butturff and Sommers 1980, Haswell 1983).
Based on that fact, I like to put forward the question: How explicit does error feedback need to be? What are the alternatives to error feedback in L2 writing to maximize students’ ability in writing? A survey was conducted to shed some facts & figures about error feedbacks to both students and teachers of EFL writing. Questionnaires were also sent to deepen 2 Introduction understanding about the situation. The results of the analysis of the questionnaire are ways to improve the way of feedback in L2 writing.2 AIMS AND OVERVIEW OF THE THESIS The purposes of this study are: • to examine the current practices of error feedback in writing for second-year and third-year students of FTU. • to discover student perceptions of traditional teachers’ error feedback & its alternatives • to provide recommendations for improvement of error feedback in writing as one way to improve the teaching and learning of writing at FTU In addition to the introduction, which presents the problem of the study, its aims and overview of the thesis, the conclusion, which is to close the thesis discussed, the thesis consists of five (05) chapters: Chapter 1 provides the background information of the study: the description of teaching writing at FTU and its importance.