Student Annotations Triggered by Teacher Feedback in L2 Business Writing

Courses that explore business writing in the second language in Korea have become the new necessity for college students before entering the workplace. The purpose of this study, therefore, attempts to investigate the effects of teacher feedback on the student annotations in L2 business writing to improve and revise the business letters more effectively. Over the 5week intensive period, the student annotation group with comment on comment (SACC) and the student annotation group (SA) completed three persuasive business letters: the pretest, the inclass writing task, and the posttest. In the SACC group, once the students received the draft with the teacher feedback, the students responded to the teacher feedback by giving two additional types of student annotations: a success indicator of reflection and a student comment on the teacher comment in the inclass writing task. The results of the study indicate significant difference in the degree of involvement in terms of the total number and the types of student annotations triggered by teacher feedback. The findings reveal positive effects of business writing instruction on student annotations: (1) to elicit better teacher feedback to match the needs of the L2 studentwriter and (2) to increase studentteacher, studenttext, and within the student participation and interaction.

Student Annotations Triggered by Teacher

Ji Yon Lee (Ewha Womans University)

Lee, Ji Yon 2014 Student Annotations Triggered by Teacher

Feedback in L2 Business Writing Korean Journal of English Language

and Linguistics, 14-4, 655-684 Courses that explore business writing in

the second language in Korea have become the new necessity for college students before entering the workplace The purpose of this study, therefore, attempts to investigate the effects of teacher feedback

on the student annotations in L2 business writing to improve and revise the business letters more effectively Over the 5-week intensive period, the student annotation group with comment on comment (SACC) and the student annotation group (SA) completed three persuasive business letters: the pretest, the in-class writing task, and the post-test In the SACC group, once the students received the draft with the teacher feedback, the students responded to the teacher feedback by giving two additional types of student annotations: a success indicator of reflection and a student comment on the teacher comment in the in-class writing task The results of the study indicate significant difference in the degree of involvement in terms of the total number and the types of student annotations triggered by teacher feedback The findings reveal positive effects of business writing instruction on student annotations: (1) to elicit better teacher feedback to match the needs of the L2 student-writer and (2) to increase student-teacher, student-text, and within the student participation and interaction.

Key Words: teacher feedback, student annotations, teacher's note on

student comment, comment on comment, L2 business writing

* The study is based on the author’s unpublished doctoral dissertation (Lee, 2012) and extends findings by Lee (2011).

1 Introduction

L2 business writing is taught in universities, and much of the learning on how to write a business letter is taught in General Business Purposes (EGBP) courses before entering the workplace (Dudely-Evans & St John, 1998) With the recent trends in technology, the traditional working environment has changed (Brieger, 2011; Louhiala-Salminen, 1996), and the ability to write

in the specific genres in English at the workplace has become a prerequisite skill for job seekers In this respect, providing L2 business writing instruction that meets the specific genres has become a necessary skill for college undergraduates In addition, it

is important to recognize that not only is improving L2 academic writing an ongoing concern for college students in Korea, but effective L2 business writing also has become a rising concern for Korean college undergraduates before entering the workplace Currently, because the EGBP courses are the student’s primary source of experience to learn how to write the business letters before any working experience, the writing courses for business purposes have become pivotal in learning how to write the many different types of business letters to the needs of other native and non-native speakers of English (Dudely-Evans & St John, 1998; Hyland, 2007; Schneider and Andre, 2005; Swales, 1990; Tebeaux, 1985) A connection needs to be made by the student to the formal features essential in business writing and

to how texts interact with the appropriate genre (Dudley-Evans

& St John, 1998; Frendo, 2005; Hyland, 2007; Zhu, 2004a, 2004b) More specifically, this means that not only is text production a part of L2 business writing, but also the genre approach in L2 business writing instruction is necessary to develop skilled writers for professional purposes (Hyland, 2002; Swales, 1990) However, in order to further develop appropriate L2 business writing instruction, it is crucial to learn how closely student-

writers are involved: the L2 writer’s internal process (Flower & Hayes, 1981; Lee, 2012) in the writing and the revision Previous studies indicate that little is known about how much students are involved during the writing and the revision process (Lee, 2011; 2012) The process approach has shown that the L2 writing process

is recursive and non-linear (Raimes, 1991; Tribble, 1996; Zamel, 1985) During the “cycles of activities,” the L2 writers return to many of the different stages of the writing process to achieve the text production (Tribble, 1996, p 5) However, the process approach has its limitations in L2 business writing Focusing on the end-product of writing and the writing process does not necessarily improve L2 writing Instead, insight on how the student writers are involved in the writing and the revision is essential to provide effective L2 writing instruction Therefore, the purpose of this study attempts to investigate the effect of teacher feedback on student feedback in L2 business writing to revise their business letters more effectively For the purposes of the current study, the student annotation is defined as a method to provide a glimpse inside the minds of the L2 student in business writing, not only for the teacher to provide more relevant and helpful feedback, but also to stimulate student awareness during the writing This study includes the following research questions:

1 How do the student annotations (SA) and the student annotations with comment on comment (SACC) differ in the frequency in L2 business writing (in total student annotations, first student annotations, second student annotations, and third annotations)?

2 How do the student annotations (SA) and the student annotations with comment on comment (SACC) triggered by teacher feedback differ in the frequency and the types in L2 business writing (in total student annotations, first student annotations, second student annotations, and third annotations)?

2 Literature Review

2.1 Genre Awareness in L2 Business Writing

College undergraduates learn how to write L2 business writing mainly in General Business Purposes (EGBP) courses before entering the workplace (Dudely-Evans & St John, 1998; Lee 2011) Clearly, the courses for business purposes have a pivotal role in learning how to write business letters The EGBP courses will be the student's main experience to learn how to write business letters before they enter the workplace Also, the courses for business purposes aim to develop writers that act as

a communication channel to other native and non-native speakers of English (Dudely-Evans & St John, 1998; Ellis & Johnson, 1994; Harding, 2007; Kirkpatrick, 2007) In this respect, these types of business courses attempt to strengthen communication skills by focusing on the preferred way of communication in the specific discourse community (Swales, 1990)

According to Alder & Elmhorst (2006), writing is considered the most frequently used skill for office workers This means that business writing courses need to be specially designed so that the students may develop the skills and understanding on how to write the different types of letters that are expected in the specific genre (Swales, 1990; Tribble, 1996) Notably, Schneider and Andre (2005) commented on “the transfer of writing skills from university to the workplace” (p 196) The implication is that genre-based writing instruction is common at the university level, but matching the authentic needs—that is, tasks matching the real-world (Dudely-Evans & St John, 1998; Jordan, 1997)—is critical

in the genre of writing Furthermore, developing awareness of the audience in the genre is necessary because the reader may have different backgrounds and experiences (Tebeaux, 1985), and the learner variables (e.g different undergraduate majors) can generate different perceptions in what to prepare for writing at the

workplace (Schneider and Andre, 2005) Therefore, raising awareness

in specific genres of business letters can be a beneficial opportunity

in a L2 business writing class

In summary, previous studies have pointed out the need for genre awareness in business writing Written business communication in English has become unavoidable with the recent trends in technology (Brieger, 2011; Dudely-Evans & St John, 1998) Therefore, genre is significant in business writing, and flexibility

to write in the different genres of business writing is critical for student-writers (Charney & Carlson, 1995)

2.2 Useful Teacher Feedback and Student Feedback

In terms of the L2 writing process, it is inevitable that the teacher and the student are forced to be engaged and interactive throughout all the stages of writing Weissberg (2006) mentions

“tutors create conversational links through questioning, repeating, rephrasing, completing, extending, and summarizing their student's contributions” (p 259) In the L2 writing process, the teacher's main role is to provide feedback during the revision process However, giving feedback is a challenge for writing teachers because they have to know how to give effective feedback, decide which feedback should be given first or which feedback should be refrained, and listen to the student's needs (Goldstein, 2004)

Clearly, considerable research in the role of the L2 writing teacher has shown the importance of the teacher's role and appropriate teacher feedback, which suggests primary scaffolding strategy (Choi, 2010; Frankenberg-Garcia, 1999; Hyland, 2003; Kabilan, 2007; Lee, 2011; Shin, 2003; Vygotsky, 1986) Harmer (2004) suggests that the role of the teacher is central by demonstrating, motivating, supporting, responding, and evaluating from the beginning until the end of the writing process (pp 41-42) Likewise, teacher feedback in L2 business writing gives guidance to students in the revision process, content and language input, and

evaluation on the writing quality (Quible, 1997) Ultimately, teacher feedback has been viewed positive from the student's perspective in the previous L2 writing research (Ferris, 1995; Hyland, 1998; Lee, 2011; Montgomery & Baker, 2007)—including L2 business writing (Quible, 1997) On the contrary, in an effort to investigate the effectiveness of teacher feedback in L2 writing instruction, it has been revealed that teacher feedback does not necessarily meet the student's needs Hyland and Hyland (2006) also stress the importance of “negotiating” with the students (p 206).

Like L2 writing instructors, the student-writers must be involving themselves on deciding which step to take next in the writing task Just as “teachers face choices when responding to student written work” (Hyland and Hyland, 2006, p 207), the two sides of the coin tell us that students most likely are making choices and building a relationship with the teacher To take a case in point, one way business writing teachers actually can encourage and trigger more student involvement is by responding to the comments of students—instead of the teacher offering all the answers upfront (Grosse, 1988) Another example

of student- teacher interaction is seen in the study of Todd, Mill, Palard, and Khamcharoen (2001), in which the degree of involvement was measured to observe the trigger cause and intentions of the student annotations and teacher feedback Further, studies have indicated the benefits of the use of student annotations (Ball, 2009; Lee, 2011; Marshall, 1998; Storch and Tapper, 1996; Suh, 2005; Wolfe, 2002), and the quality of revisions using the annotations all indicate the degree of student involvement The student annotations in L2 writing are comments intended for the student-teacher interaction, student-text interaction, and the self-interaction to improve the writing quality (Lee, 2011, 2012) Historically and currently, the annotations are writing actions, which can be written in a form that may be visual and graphic, and they are located outside the text (Ball, 2009, 2010,

2013; Diyanni, 2002; Lee, 2012; Liu, 2006; Marshall, 1998, Wolfe, 2002; Wolfe & Neuwirth, 2001) No matter how much revision is made, the annotations are a key source of information to what the teachers really want to know about what the student is really thinking during the writing and the revision Naturally, feedback after feedback will be given by the teacher not only on the text, but also to the comments of the students It is a laborious process for the instructor (Park, 2009; Quible, 1997); the student annotations may seem impractical in L2 writing instruction due to the extensive teacher labor involved in giving content and error feedback (Ferris & Roberts, 2001; Lee, 2009a, 2009b).

In addition to needing to focus on revealing the student’s mind, the use of student annotations have shown the practical purposes in previous studies of L2 writing (Storch & Tapper,

1996, 1997; Suh, 2005) According to Quible (1997), in order for the student-writer to connect with the teacher feedback, the student annotations reveal comments to achieve correct revision

in L2 business writing For example, the student annotations give hints to the intended meaning of the actual text and the comment written by the student (Lee, 2011, 2012; Ramage and Bean, 1995; Wolfe, 2002) Secondly, the student annotations demonstrate evidence in the L2 writer's needs and preferences in the category of feedback (Lee, 2011, 2012; Paulus, 1999; Storch & Tapper, 1997; Suh, 2005) Third, reflection, which is a type of self-monitoring, is stimulated in the student annotations (Harmer, 2004; Hyland, 2003; Lee, 2011, 2012; Storch & Tapper, 1997; Suh, 2005; Tribble, 1996) Self-monitoring is significant because the L2 writer is able to shift from the routine work of the writing process to a more involved-approach in the revision process Lastly, the student annotations encourage differing quality of revisions (Hedgcock and Lefkowitz, 1994; Lee, 2011, 2012; Quible, 1997; Raimes, 1983) Hence, the degree of involvement in the L2 writing process describes the student's writing experiences

3 Research Method

3.1 Subjects

Twenty college undergraduates participated in the study All participants were Korean females with at least eight years of English language practice and currently have academic writing experiences However, the participants had no workplace training and were registered in a business writing at the College of Business As seen in Table 1, the 20 participants were placed into the following two groups: the SACC group (the student annotations with student comment on comment teacher feedback group) and the SA group (the student annotations group)

Table 1 Pretest Scores of Participants by Group and Level

The SACC group (n = 10) and the SA group (n = 10)) were

randomly and equally divided into two groups and equally into

similar two writing proficiency levels (high, n = 5; low, n = 5)

based on the pretest scores, which was holistically scored using the adapted Test of Written Examination (TWE) on a scale from

0 (lowest) to 5 (highest) (Al-Musawi & Al-Ansari, 1999; Jordan, 1997) In the SACC group, two seniors, two juniors, and one

freshman were in the high-level proficiency group (M = 4.38),

and five freshmen were placed in the low-level proficiency group

(M = 1.1) Also, in the SA group, three seniors, one junior, and one freshman were placed in the high-level proficiency group (M =

4.74), and three sophomores and two freshmen were in the

low-level proficiency group (M = 1.08).

3.2 Materials

The materials for the study include a pretest and a post-test, in-class task worksheet, and a student-made annotation packet For the pretest and post-test and the in-class writing task, three different writing prompts for a persuasive business letter were selected from a business English course book from Clark, Zimmer, & Tinervia (1994) The purpose of the pretest, the post-test, and the in-class writing task were similar in content The three different prompts required the student-writer to write three persuasive business letters To give students ample space to write their writing task and annotations, the blank form sheets were double the size of the regular paper (420 x 594 mm) for the SACC and the SA groups, and they also were provided with

an unlimited number of task blank sheets to complete their writing Lined paper was distributed for the pretest and the post-test, and no student annotations and teacher feedback were included in the pretest and the post-test

3.3 Procedure

The pretest and post-test, the student annotation training, and the overall in-class writing tasks (writing the first, second, and third drafts) were completed over an intensive 5-week period (see Figure 1) First, both the SACC (the experimental group) and SA (the control group) groups took the pretest with a limit

of 30 minutes during class time, which did not include writing the student annotations The in-class writing task included three drafts The SACC group (the student annotations with student comment on comment teacher feedback group) and the SA group (the student annotations group) were required to complete the in-class writing task that includes the student annotations during the revision process

For the in-class writing task, the students from the SACC and

SA groups were both trained on how to produce their annotations

on their writing needs before receiving the teacher feedback Additionally, the students were required to produce a list of useful student annotations from the adapted subcategories before the in-class writing task (Storch & Tapper, 1997) The students’ compiled list of annotations was collected and was made into a packet The compiled list of annotations was distributed to each student for the first, second, and third drafts of the in-class writing task The students reflected their own and original understanding of their own texts, their own annotations, the teacher feedback, and the teacher's response on the student comment in their annotations

However, an additional set of student annotations was required for the all the participants in the SACC group: the reflection and the comment on comment (student comment on teacher feedback) First, to raise awareness in the writing process (McNamara, 2001), the student annotations addressed any thoughts, actions, concerns, questions, and decisions during the writing and the revision; and secondly, the reflection and the comment on comment reflected any thoughts, actions, concerns, questions, and decisions from the teacher feedback received in the previous draft (Charles, 1990; Frendo, 2005; Storch & Tapper, 1997) Reflection may encourage the opportunity to self-monitor the student’s thoughts and actions during the revision process (Charles, 1990; Storch & Tapper, 1997) by giving a “success indication of either a positive, neutral,

Figure 1 Research Procedure

or negative response” to the teacher feedback (Frendo, 2005, p 135) The comment on comment, which was a separate activity from the “reflection,” also aims at sustaining the students' awareness level and encouraging their effective self-monitoring in the revision process The purpose of using the reflection and the comment on comment was explained to the SACC group before the start of the second draft and the third draft

Lastly, the teacher gave an additional response to the student comment on teacher comment (teacher's note on student comment)

in the SACC group Considering the amount of writing, 60 minutes was given to complete the writing (Caudery, 1990; Polio et al., 1998; Shin, 2011) and all the student annotations for the SACC group (including the reflection and the comment on comment) and the SA group After drafting three times, all the participants from both groups took the post-test The post-test was also given 30 minutes to write during class time The post-test did not include the student annotations and the teacher feedback

3.4 Data Analysis

The writing quality for the twenty participants (pretest, post-test, draft 1, draft 2, and draft 3) in the SACC group and the SA group was holistically and analytically scored The scoring was given

by two raters, the researcher and a college professor in English Education, by using the adapted Test of Written Examination

(TWE) 6-scale rubric (0=lowest, 5=highest) The average for the

interrater reliability was 90

The student annotations and the teacher feedback also were coded and counted to quantify them (see Appendix A) They were categorized into 12 areas by using the adapted categories

of response intentions specified by Storch and Tapper (1997) The subcategory of style was added since the writing task was a persuasive business letter (Davies & Birbili, 2000; Dudley-Evans

& St John, 1998; Harmer, 2004; Lee, 2011, 2012; Swales, 1990;

Tribble, 1996) Any complimentary remarks and emoticons used

to express personal emotions related to the context and the written time of the student annotations and the teacher responses was categorized as other (Lee, 2011, 2012)

The degree of involvement was also measured to examine the types (trigger cause and intentions) of the student annotations and the teacher feedback Therefore, to examine further the degree

of involvement in the student annotations, the five categories of response from Todd, Mills, Palard, and Khamcharoen (2001)—such

as, exposition, questions, problem, solution, and non-specific-were implemented in the study to examine the types of student annotations triggered by teacher feedback (see Table 2) Later, all the types of student annotations triggered by teacher feedback were coded and counted to quantify them

Additionally, to observe the differences in the frequency distribution of the student annotations and the teacher feedback between the SACC and the SA groups the Pearson's chi-square

test was implemented in the study The independent t-test also

was used to examine the statistical differences between the mean

of the student annotation and the teacher feedback frequencies in each of the sub-categories used in the SACC and the SA groups Both the teacher and the student-writer used the adapted sub-categories in the student annotations, the comments on comment, and the teacher feedback The comment on comment (CC) includes student's comment on teacher comment and the reflection Finally, the frequency of the types of student annotations triggered by the teacher feedback and the frequency of the types of teacher feedback generated by the student annotations were counted to observe the degree of involvement

Type Definition Student Annotation

Example Exposition Exposition is a statement,

giving further information and description and explanations of one’s thought

I tried to reorganize the first paragraph because you said it was too long.

Question Questions are

interrogative sentences, directly or indirectly asking a question.

Do I need to make longer pursuation?

Problem Problem expresses one’s

difficulty on a certain issue.

But I'm not sure if this is what you expect.

Solution Solution suggests an

approach to solve a problem.

May we request… no question mark!

Non-Specific

Comment

Non-Specific comments indicate any comments made in the last part of the feedback.

I had fun revising! :)

Table 2

Taxonomy of Student Annotation Types Triggered by Teacher Feedback

Note: The Student Annotation Example documents the actual student’s writings; therefore, all errors are original.

4 Results and Discussion

4.1 Student Feedback Triggered by Teacher Feedback

To identify the main findings of the first research question, this section discusses the differences in the frequency of the student annotations (in total annotations, first student annotations, second student annotations, and third student annotations) triggered by the frequency of teacher feedback (in total teacher feedback, first teacher feedback, and second teacher feedback) between the student annotations group (SA) and the student annotations with comment

Group Student Annotation

Table 3 Frequency Distribution of Student Annotations and Comment

on Comment by Group

The number of student annotations in the SA group decrease among the first student annotations (SA1), the second student annotations (SA2), and the third student annotations (SA3); however, in the SACC group it eventually increases, as seen in

Figure 2 (SA1, n = 33; SA2, n = 27; SA3, n = 48) Even though

Figure 2 Frequency of Student Annotations in Three In-Class Writing

Tasks by Group