GIVING FEEDBACK ON STUDENT WRITING II

Lecture 5

Teaching Writing in EFL/ESL

Joy Robbins

LAST WEEK’S TASK

Last week I asked you to prepare a short

presentation in which you showed us the

kind of written feedback you would give 2

of my former students who were studying

general English at this university. I also

asked you to say why your feedback would

be the way it is…

Over to you!!

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FURTHER DISCUSSION ABOUT FEEDBACK

Here are a few more questions about feedback for you to discuss which relate

to last week’s session…

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TODAY’S SESSION

Today we’re going to have a look at another paper by Fiona Hyland which uses the some of the same student informants as Hyland & Hyland’s study that we looked at last week.

The difference this week is that we’re going to examine how the students themselves felt about the feedback they were given more closely…

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HYLAND’S INFORMANTS

2 international students on pre-sessional courses at a New Zealand university:Maho (Japanese undergraduate)Samorn (Thai postgraduate)

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SAMORN’S DEMOTIVATION

Samorn ‘started the course with positive feelings towards writing and ended it feeling very demotivated and lacking in confidence.’ (Hyland 1998: 268-9)

It seems as though the written feedback she got on her writing was

at least partly to blame…

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SAMORN’S DEMOTIVATION (2) Samorn had always had positive comments

about her grammar in her English classes in Thailand

She requested that Nadia, her teacher, focus on grammar in her written feedback, which she did

But the effect was negative in one sense:‘…the feedback given to [Samorn] on grammar appeared to be counterproductive, in affective terms, even though it had a positive effect on her texts.’ (Hyland 1998: 277)Why? Why do you think Samorn might have reacted negatively to her teacher’s

feedback on her writing?7

SAMORN’S DEMOTIVATION (3)

Hyland interviewed Samorn to try to find out why she felt so negative about writing by the end of the course. It was clear that Samorn expected praise for her writing:

‘I think that my grammar is good but I didn’t get any comments that ‘oh your grammar is good, but you still have to, you still have to correct about something like this’ But all the comments come that my writing is not so good, so I feel that everything is poor. […] I think that at least she should admire me some points. […] From that time I discouraged a lot and I feel don’t like writing.’ (Hyland 1998: 277-8)

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SAMORN’S DEMOTIVATION (4)

Hyland confirms that Nadia, Samorn’s teacher, never praised her grammar:‘It was certainly true that no positive comments on grammar were made by Nadia. Instead she tended to show Samorn her problems by underlining and indicating the area in which the problem lay.’ (Hyland 1998: 278)

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SAMORN’S DEMOTIVATION (5)

‘The fact that positive reinforcement on grammar had been given to her previously had created an expectation for Samorn. After Nadia failed to fulfil this expectation, Samorn felt cheated and appeared to lose confidence in her ability to function as a writer in an academic environment. […] She said that her lack of confidence in her writing ability would cause her to “try to avoid writing at all costs” in the future.’ (Hyland 1998: 278-9)

And in fact, although Samorn had been intending to study a master’s degree in Business, as a result of the pre-sessional course, she changed to Tourism, because there was apparently less writing to do. 10

SAMORN: LESSONS TO LEARN

‘Samorn claimed that she wanted grammatical correction; in fact, she stated that this was the feedback that she “loved the most”. However, she also wanted praise for her grammar. When faced with a large number of grammatical corrections and no positive comments on her grammatical ability, her confidence in her writing ability suffered, together with her motivation to write. Her teacher knew nothing about Samorn’s unhappiness and commented in Samorn’s final report that she had made good progress in her writing.’ (Hyland 1998: 279)How could Nadia have ensured she gave Samorn the kind of feedback that would

produce positive effects, rather than negative effects?

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DIFFERENCES IN STUDENT NEEDS Hyland points out that, because different

students want different types of feedback, it may not be a good idea to give the same kind of feedback to every student.

Nadia had another student in the same class as Samorn, Mei, who claimed that any praise in the teacher’s feedback was ‘a waste of time’:‘I think I’ve already got enough confidence so I don’t need any more good comments. The problem, um, I want development, so I want to know the weaknesses most.’ (Hyland 1998: 280)

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HYLAND’S SOLUTION

Hyland claims that the way to give each type of student appropriate feedback is to find out what

they want:‘To help prevent miscommunication, teachers and students should talk together in detail about their aims and expectations with regard to feedback. Teachers need to allocate some time for face-to-face discussion with the individual student on feedback issues, to gain an awareness of the student’s perspective and an understanding of what each individual student brings with them to the course in terms of past experiences and expectations. It is also possible for discussion on the various types of feedback to take place in small peer groups, so that students can make comparisons with their classmates. […] Such contrasts allow students to see that there are many different ways of using feedback and may encourage them to try new strategies and to abandon ones which have not been effective for them. (Hyland 1998: 280)

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YOUR REACTION TO HYLAND Is Hyland right? Is face-to-face dialogue with

each student the way forward?

What are the potential problems with putting Hyland’s idea into practice?

Would you be willing & comfortable to use Hyland’s idea in your teaching context? Why (not)?

Can you suggest any other alternative solutions to reducing teacher—student miscommunication over writing feedback?

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THE IMPORTANCE OF CONTEXT WHEN GIVING FEEDBACK

In her recent book on feedback, Goldstein (2005) makes the important point that context should play a vital part in determining how teachers give students feedback.

Let’s have a look at what she says in more detail…

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THE IMPORTANCE OF CONTEXT (2) Goldstein (2005) begins by arguing:

‘Some teachers and students work within institutions where writing and what someone has to say about writing is highly valued. […] Conversely, other teachers and students work within contexts where writing…is seen as an exercise in developing grammatical and lexical expertise. Even teachers who do not believe that writing instruction should have as its raison d’etre the development of linguistic competence may be hard pressed to provide written commentary on content and rhetorical concerns in the manner they believe is effective because of the pressure to respond to students’ grammatical and lexical errors first and foremost.’ (p.11)

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THE IMPORTANCE OF CONTEXT (3) Goldstein (2005) then says:

‘No matter what view of writing an institution or program professes to hold, requirements based on number of words, drafts, or papers, plus entrance and exit exams, exert strong pressure on teacher commentary and student revision.’ (p.12)

Goldstein also makes the point that the teachers’ workload and class sizes will influence how much and how thorough

the commentary can be (p.14).

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CONTEXT: AN OVERVIEW

Goldstein (2005) nicely captures all of these contextual considerations in the following

diagram…

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CONTEXT: AN OVERVIEW (GOLDSTEIN 2005: 10)

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OTHER VARIABLES AFFECTING FEEDBACK:

‘TEACHER’ AND ‘STUDENT’ FACTORS Goldstein (2005) goes on to talk about how

what she calls ‘teacher’ and ‘student’ factors may affect how teachers give feedback to students.

Teacher factors include:teacher personalitythe teacher’s pedagogical beliefs about how to

commentattitudes toward specific student characteristicsattitudes toward each studentattitudes toward the content about which students

are writingexpectations of students at a particular levelexpectations of particular students (Goldstein 2005:

18)20

STUDENT FACTORS Student factors include:

personalityagegoals and expectationsmotivationsproficiency levelpast learning experiencespreferred learning styles and strategiescontent knowledge and interesttime constraintsattitudes toward the teacher, the class, the

content, the writing assignment, and the commentary itself (Goldstein 2005: 18) 21

LESSON: IT’S IMPORTANT TO FIND OUT HOW STUDENTS REACT TO

FEEDBACK Icy Lee (2008) argues that

‘Without understanding how students feel about and respond to teacher feedback, teachers may run the risk of continually using strategies that are counter-productive. As teachers give feedback on student writing, it is crucial that student responses to the feedback are fed back to teachers…to help [teachers] develop reflective and effective feedback practices’. (p.145)

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STUDENTS MAY NOT BE HAPPY…

Indeed, many of the student writers in Lee’s (2008) study seemed to want a different types of feedback and correction from the type their teachers were giving them…

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FEEDBACK AND THE STUDENT—TEACHER RELATIONSHIP Lee & Schallert (2008) is a recent study which looks at

a Korean writing classroom One writer trusts the teacher and her feedback;

another doesn’t

Unsurprisingly, the student who trusts the teacher and has a good relationship with her values her feedback and works hard to improve his writing, profiting from her feedback…While his colleague, who doesn’t trust the teacher’s abilities and who doesn’t make as much effort, doesn’t…

So it’s not only about the quality of the feedback; it’s also about the student—teacher relationship…

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POST-FEEDBACK

As Ferris (2008) points out, post-feedback behaviours are also important:‘Once students have completed a revision of a paper after getting feedback…, they can be asked to submit with the revision a cover memo that explains how they addressed the comments and suggestions given by teachers and/or peers, what changes they made, and what suggestions they chose not to act upon and why.’ (p.113)

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REFERENCES

Ferris DR (2008) Feedback: issues and options. In P. Friedrich (ed.), Teaching Academic Writing. London: Continuum, pp.93-124.

Goldstein LM (2005) Teacher Written Commentary in Second Language Classrooms. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Hyland F (1998) The impact of teacher written feedback on individual writers. Journal of Second Language Writing 7(3): 255-286.

Lee G & Schallert DL (2008) Meeting in the margins: effects of the teacher—student relationship on revision processes of EFL college students taking a composition course. Journal of Second Language Writing 17: 165-182.

Lee I (2008) Student reactions to teacher feedback in two Hong Kong secondary classrooms. Journal of Second Language Writing 17: 144-164.

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THIS WEEK’S READING

Chapter 7 of:Ferris D & Hedgcock JS (2005) Teaching ESL

Composition: Purpose, Process, and Practice.

Lee I (2004) Error correction in L2 secondary writing classrooms: the case of Hong Kong. Journal of Second Language Writing 13: 285-312.

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