VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY — HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES FACULTY OF ENGLISH LINGUISTICS & LITERATURE THE EFFECTS OF WRITTEN CODED CORRECTIVE FEEDBACK ON PRE-INTERMEDIATE EFL STUDENTS’ PARAGRAPH WRITING A thesis submitted to the Faculty of English Linguistics & Literature in partial fulfillment of the Master‟s degree in TESOL By NGUYỄN XUÂN HỒNG Supervised by PHÓ PHƢƠNG DUNG, Ph. HO CHI MINH CITY, OCTOBER 2021 ACKNOWLDEGEMENTS First of all, I would like to express my deep gratitude to my supervisor, Dr. Phó Phương Dung, for her kindness and dedication. There are no words that can fully show my appreciation for what she has done for me.
Without her guidance and encouragement, I would not have been able to overcome this challenge. My sincere thanks also go to my colleagues who created all the favorable conditions for me to collect data for this study. I am grateful and thankful for their valuable support. I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks to my two classmates, Ms.
La Nguyệt Thanh and Ms. Đặng Lê Vy, for being by my side through ups and downs from the very beginning of the course. Last but not least, I would like to express my deep sense of gratitude to my family for their unconditional love and support. Without their care and encouragement, I would have never had enough motivation to go to the end of this journey.
i STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY I certify that this thesis entitled “THE EFFECTS OF WRITTEN CODED CORRECTIVE FEEDBACK ON PRE-INTERMEDIATE EFL STUDENTS’ PARAGRAPH WRITING” is my own work. This thesis has not been submitted for the award of any degree or diploma in any other institution. Ho Chi Minh City, October 26th, 2021 Nguyễn Xuân Hồng ii RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS I hereby state that I, NGUYEN XUAN HONG, being the candidate for the degree of Master of TESOL, accept the requirement of the University relating to the retention and use of Master‟s Theses deposited in the Library. In terms of these conditions, I agree that the originality of my thesis deposited in the Library should be accessible for the purposes of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the Library for the care, loan or reproduction of theses.
Ho Chi Minh City, October 26th, 2021 Nguyễn Xuân Hồng iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLDEGEMENTS. i STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY. ii RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS.
iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS. ix LIST OF TABLES. x LIST OF FIGURES. xii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION .1 Background to the study .2 Aims of the study .3 Research questions and hypotheses .4 Significance of the study .5 Scope of the study .6 Organization of thesis chapters.
5 CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW .1 Definition of writing errors .2 Types of writing errors .1 Surface Structure Taxonomy .3 Common errors in English writing of Vietnamese learners .4 Treatable and untreatable errors.3 Sources of errors .2 Error correction and L2 writing development .1 Definition of feedback .2 Types of written corrective feedback .3 Sources of feedback.4 Written Coded Corrective Feedback (WCCF) .1 The concept of Written Coded Corrective Feedback (WCCF) .2 Benefits of WCCF in teaching EFL writing.3 Drawbacks of WCCF in teaching EFL writing .4 Previous studies related to the implementation of WCCF .5 Conceptual framework of the present study .4 The main study .2 The teaching materials.1 The writing topics .2 Guidelines for each writing topic .3 Table of error examples .4 Data collection procedure .5 Data analysis scheme.1 Student writing analysis. 50 CHAPTER 4 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION .1 Effects of WCCF on the number of made errors in paragraph compositions of pre-intermediate EFL students .1 Results of the pretest .2 Results of the posttest .3 Results from within the EG comparison .2 Types of writing errors (marked with WCCF) that pre-intermediate EFL students revised correctly .1 Verb tense errors .2 Verb form errors .3 Singular-plural errors .4 Subject-verb agreement errors.5 Word order errors .3 Attitudes of pre-intermediate EFL students towards the implementation of WCCF .1 Demographic information of the participants .2 Students‟ attitudes towards benefits of WCCF .3 Students‟ problems (if any) when experiencing WCCF .4 Students‟ preference for teacher WCCF. 79 CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS .1 Summary of findings .2 Pedagogical implications of WCCF .1 For EFL teachers .2 For EFL learners .3 Limitations of the study .4 Recommendations for future studies. 95 APPENDIX 1 WRITING TOPICS.
95 APPENDIX 2 TABLE OF ERROR EXAMPLES (FOR THE EG). 97 APPENDIX 3 TABLE OF ERROR EXAMPLES (FOR THE CG). 99 APPENDIX 4 ORIGINAL QUESTIONNAIRE. 101 APPENDIX 5 OFFICIAL QUESTIONNAIRE (ENGLISH VERSION).
104 APPENDIX 6 OFFICIAL QUESTIONNAIRE (VIETNAMESE VERSION). 107 vii APPENDIX 7 SAMPLE GUIDELINES FOR WRITING TOPIC 1. 111 APPENDIX 8 ERROR TYPES AND THEIR CODES USED IN MARKING THE STUDENTS‟ WRITING. 112 APPENDIX 9 SAMPLE WRITING MARKED WITH WCCF.
113 APPENDIX 10 QUESTIONNAIRE ITEMS ADAPTATION. 114 APPENDIX 11 NUMBER OF ERRORS IN THE FOUR COMPOSITIONS OF THE EG. 118 APPENDIX 12 PERCENTAGES OF CORRECTED ERRORS. 119 viii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS CF Corrective Feedback CG Control Group EFL English as a Foreign Language EG Experimental Group ESL English as a Second Language L1 First Language L2 Second Language SP Singular-plural SPSS Statistical Package for the Social Sciences SV Subject-verb agreement VF Verb form VT Verb tense WCCF Written Coded Corrective Feedback WO Word order ix LIST OF TABLES Table 2.
Ten most common writing errors of Vietnamese learners of English. Changes in writing topic 2 after pilot study 1. Error categories and codes (Ferris, 2006, p. Table of error examples.
The outline of the questionnaire .The Cronbach‟s alpha of the official questionnaire. Normality test of the pretest. Result of the Mann Whitney U-test for the pretest. Normality test of the posttest.
Result of the independent samples t-test for the posttest. Normality test for the comparison within the EG. Result of the Wilcoxon matched-pairs test. Participant demographic information.
Student‟s attitudes towards the benefits of WCCF. Student‟s attitudes towards possible problems of WCCF. Student‟s preference for teacher WCCF. 78 x LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2.
The conceptual framework of the present study. The revision form. Procedure of data collection. Numbers of errors in the pretest and the posttest.
Average percentage of corrected errors. Percentages of verb tense errors that were corrected. Percentages of verb form errors that were corrected. Percentages of singular-plural errors that were corrected.
Percentages of subject-verb agreement errors that were corrected. Percentages of word order errors that were corrected. 69 xi ABSTRACT Written corrective feedback (CF), or grammar correction in particular, has long been researched in the field of teaching writing English as a Foreign Language (EFL). However, the effects of written CF on student writing are still questioned because of the inconsistency among the findings of studies in the field.
Employing a mixed methods design, the present study investigated the effects of Written Coded Corrective Feedback (WCCF) on pre-intermediate EFL students‟ paragraph writing. Two General English classes were chosen conveniently to be one experimental group (EG) who received WCCF and one control group (CG) who received no error treatment. The comparisons between the pretest and the posttest of EG and CG showed that there was a statistically significant difference in the number of errors in the writings of the two groups. The participants who received WCCF made much fewer errors in their posttest.
The qualitative analysis of the EG‟s writing revealed the types of errors (marked with WCCF) that the students revised correctly. Among the five categories of errors targeted in the study, WCCF seemed to be more effective with word order errors, singular-plural errors, and subject-verb agreement errors than with verb tense errors and verb form errors. Finally, through the questionnaire, the participants showed positive attitudes towards the implementation of WCCF. Based on the findings, the study proposed several implications for integrating WCCF into teaching EFL writing to pre-intermediate students.
Key words: written coded corrective feedback (WCCF), errors, grammar, writing, EFL students xii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION This chapter provides the introduction to the current study. The chapter includes six sections which are (1) background to the study, (2) aims of the study, (3) research questions and hypotheses, (4) significance of the study, (5) scope of the study, and (6) organization of thesis chapters.1 Background to the study In the field of teaching writing English as a Foreign Language (EFL), written corrective feedback (CF) is known as „error correction‟ or „grammar correction‟ in particular (Ferris, 2012; Truscott, 1996, 2007). Written CF is a controversial topic in EFL writing. Generally, there are two schools of thought about the need of written CF.
On the one hand, making errors is considered an essential stage in learners‟ language development (both L1 and L2), so there is no need for error correction (Krashen, 1982). On the other hand, error correction is viewed as a necessary stage in teaching EFL writing because of its benefits on learners‟ language acquisition (H. With a huge volume of studies on written CF, it is safe to say that error correction has gained its importance in the current context of teaching EFL writing (Ferris, 2010). In other words, with the aim of enhancing learners‟ writing, there is a high demand for error correction on student writing.
There are different forms of written CF in L2 writing. Teachers‟ response to student writing errors can take the form of either indirect CF or direct CF. With indirect CF, the teacher indicates error existence without providing any correction (Ellis, Loewen, & Erlam, 2006). Alternatively, the teacher can employ direct CF through which the corrected versions of the errors in student writing are provided (Ellis et al.
Each type of CF has its own benefits to L2 learners‟ writing development. Direct CF seems to be appropriate for beginners who do not have enough linguistic knowledge to self-correct the errors yet (Ferris, 2003). Indirect CF is effective in 1 increasing student engagement with error correction and awareness of the nature of writing errors, thus improving students‟ long-term writing development (Ferris, 2010; Ferris, Liu, Sinha, & Senna, 2013; Lalande, 1982). When using indirect CF, EFL teachers need to decide whether to employ Written Coded Corrective Feedback (WCCF) or written un-coded CF.
WCCF provides learners with the identification of error types, e. using „VT‟ to indicate a verb tense error (Lee, 2004). Alternatively, indirect CF can be delivered in the form of written un-coded CF, through which the teacher only underlines or circles the errors (Lee, 2004). WCCF has appeared to be more effective than written un-coded CF in terms of reducing the number of student writing errors (Erel & Bulut, 2007; Sampson, 2012).
In general, teachers have a wide choice of written CF forms, depending on the required level of explicitness of error correction. Over the past twenty years, written CF has received great interest from several scholars in the field of L2 writing (Ferris, 2015). These studies have employed different approaches from quantitative to qualitative (Ferris, 2015) to investigate various aspects of written CF, such as the effectiveness of direct and indirect CF on learners‟ writing accuracy (Salimi & Valizadeh, 2015; Sampson, 2012). However, there are few studies that investigate the effects of written CF by using both quantitative data from an experimental study and qualitative data from student writing analysis (Ferris, 2010).
Moreover, the findings of studies in the field are inconsistent. While Truscott (1996) was against the benefits of corrective feedback, Van Beuningen, De Jong, and Kuiken (2012) and N. Nguyen (2020) are in support of the positive effects that corrective feedback casts on students‟ writing accuracy. Such gap intrigues the researcher to conduct this study which employs a mixed methods design to investigate the effects of WCCF on pre-intermediate EFL students‟ paragraph writing.