Linguistic Features of Teachers'' Feedbacks to Students'' Answers in Lectures from TOEFL iBT

CHAPTER 1 MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING THE UNIVERSITY OF DANANG NGUYỄN THỊ MỸ LIÊN LINGUISTIC FEATURES OF TEACHERS’ FEEDBACKS TO STUDENTS’ ANSWERS IN LECTURES FROM TOEFL iBT Field THE ENGLISH LA[.]

THE UNIVERSITY OF DANANG

NGUYỄN THỊ MỸ LIÊN

LINGUISTIC FEATURES OF TEACHERS’ FEEDBACKS TO STUDENTS’ ANSWERS

IN LECTURES FROM TOEFL iBT

Field : THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE Code: 60220201

MASTER THESIS IN SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES

(A SUMMARY)

DANANG, 2014

Supervisor: NGŨ THIỆN HÙNG, Ph.D

Examiner 1: NGUYỄN QUANG NGOẠN, Ph.D

Examiner 2: LƯU QUÝ KHƯƠNG, Assoc.Prof.Dr

The thesis will be orally defended at the Examining Committee Time : 04/ 01/ 2014

Venue : The University of Da Nang

The origin of the thesis is accessible for the purpose of reference at:

- The library of College of Foreign Languages, University of DaNang

- Information Resources Centre, the University of Da Nang

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 RATIONALE

From a lot of studies, we know that the teacher is the major in-school influence on student achievement In almost factors influencing student achievement, feedback is at or near the top of these factors which have greatest effect on student learning Therefore, it is important to realize that feedback is not only an outcome of student performance but an essential part of the learning process as well In reality, teacher’s feedbacks to students’ answers in lectures sometimes are not appropriate Strategic feedback is not used very often by teachers However, such feedback helps students to acquire skills which allow them to avoid errors in future by controlling and mastering their own performance The use of teachers’ feedback is helpful to create harmonious relationship between teachers and students and improve students’ interest in learning English and consciousness of politeness.That is the reason for which in this paper how teachers perform the speech act of feedback is about to be explored when responding to student’s answers In Vietnamese, however, the research of teachers’ feedbacks

to students’ answers in lecture is still untouched Especially, the study concerning syntactic, semantic and pragmatic features reveal many questions which need being examined

For all the above reasons, a study with the title linguistic features of teachers’ feedbacks to students’ answers in lectures from TOEFL iBT is carried out This paper is just an attempt to

answers in lectures with syntactic, semantic and pragmatic features

1.2 AIMS AND OBJECTIVES

1.2.1 Aims

Through an investigation into linguistic features of teachers’ feedbacks to students’ answers in lectures, this research aims to describe and analyze different types of teachers’ feedbacks to students’ answers in terms of syntactic, semantic and pragmatic features Then it provides Vietnamese teachers and students of English with an insightful knowledge concerning the effective use for teachers and interpreting the meaning of feedbacks for students in lectures in English

1) What are the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic features

of teachers’ feedbacks to students’ answers in lectures in English?

2) How did the students at Tay Nguyen University experience the teachers’ feedbacks to their answers in lectures in English?

3) What pedagogical suggestions should be put forward to the teaching and learning concerning teachers’ feedbacks to students’ answers in lectures in English?

1.4 SCOPE OF THE STUDY

In order to successfully fulfill objectives as mentioned above, such issues of syntax as clausal structures, syntactic functions of lexical items used in teacher’s feedbacks, issues of semantics like epistemic modality of the lexical items, the attitudinal meaning of the modal markers used in teacher’s feedbacks, and issues of pragmatics like the interpersonal functions of the teachers’ feedbacks and the speech fillers, hedges used in this kind of speech act are mentioned Though prosody and stress are two distinctive features of this kind of speech act in the conversational and interactive lectures, such phonetic phenomena will not be examined and thus, they are beyond the scope of this study

1.5 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

1.6 ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY

The thesis consists of 5 main chapters

Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 2: Literature Review and Theoretical Background Chapter 3: Methodology and Procedures

Chapter 4: Findings and Discussions

Chapter 5: Conclusion and Implications

LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

2.1 PREVIOUS STUDIES

Werts, et al (1995) found that instructive feedback was an effective instructional strategy Researchers, in this review of literature, found that students acquire and maintain most of the instructive feed-back information

Griffin, et al (1998) also investigated the effectiveness of instructive feedback and found that students with mild disabilities and students with moderate disabilities learned the supplemental information that was provided

Kline, et al (1991) investigated the effectiveness of elaborated feedback routines in a study involving 27 teachers and 54 students with learning disabilities

For Vietnamese authors, the latest study of the matters of lecture discourse should be mentioned here is M.A Thesis Trần Thị

Thanh Thanh (2012) It only described and analyzed imperative

sentences used in lectures in English

Nguyễn Thị Trà My (2010) made an investigation into representatives in English lecture discourse In this study, the author exposed their internal structures, their syntactic realization and their semantic functions beside their ultimate function of imparting or communicating information in English lecture discourse

In conclusion, some English linguists and Vietnamese authors have mentioned to the teachers’ feedbacks in general and found out how to use these feedbacks in lectures However, the

linguistic features of teachers’ feedbacks to students’ answers in detail have not been dealt with so far in these above studies

2.2 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

2.2.1 Lecture styles

2.2.2 Definition of Teachers’ Feedbacks

2.2.3 Teacher's Feedback and Functional Grammar

2.2.4 Epistemic Modality and Attitudinal Meaning

2.2.5 Speech Acts and Lecture Discourse

2.2.6 Teachers’ Feedbacks and Politeness Theory

2.2.7 Teachers’ Feedbacks and Ellipsis

2.3 SUMMARY

This chapter is a review of the literature dealing with lecture styles, teachers’ feedbacks, epistemic modality, speech acts, and politeness theory In this chapter, aspects of grammar are presented in view of functional grammar Factive and non-factive are also referred

to Especially, the distinction of content hedges has been made to guide the seeking of analysis of politeness strategie in teachers’ feedbacks All these theories serve as a background of the study and will be further discussed in the following chapters

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This chapter describes the research design and research methods carried out in the study It firstly presents the research design indicating how the paper is done Secondly, it describes the steps which are taken during the process of researching, including choosing data Next, this is followed by the description of samples The chapter also describes how data are collected and analyzed

3.1 RESEARCH METHOD

This study is based on the descriptive and qualitative methods The purpose of using the descriptive research method is to acquire accurate, factual, systematic data that can provide me with an actual picture of the data set that I am reviewing so that I can select valid and reliable data The study was aimed to look for qualitative information about linguistic features of teachers’ feedbacks to student’s answers The qualitative method is used to analyze and describe teachers’ feedbacks in terms of syntactic, semantic and pragmatic features

In this study, the reviewed existing theories serve as a basis

of the data analysis Particular is paid to analyzing and categorizing the data syntactically, semantically and pragmatically

3.4 RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY

Reliability and validity are two most important criteria to guarantee the quality of the data collection procedures

3.5 SUMMARY

This chapter presents research methodology and the ways to collect data including how to get samples, instrumentation and procedure of data collection In addition, the ways to analyse data and reliability and validity of the thesis are also mentioned in chapter 3 This chapter shows in detail necessary preparations for further findings and discussion in chapter 4

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS

4.1 THE SYNTACTIC FEATURES OF TEACHERS’ FEEDBACKS IN THE VIEW OF FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR

4.1.1 Teacher’s Feedback as the Clause of Exchange

To begin the syntactic analysis, first, we cop down teachers’ feedbacks into the clauses considered as clauses of exchange These feedbacks are analyzed into Mood and Residue Then we identify the Subject and the Finite of each feedback As stated in the previous chapter, the Subject and the Finite are the elements of Mood Subjects normally precede the Finite in declarative clauses and determine the person and number of the Finite Subjects are typically realized by nominal groups On the other hand, the Finites are normally marked for tense and may be marked for number agreement (i.e., agreeing with the person and number of the Subject) They are parts of verb group and they usually realized with auxiliary verbs Then the analysis falls into the rest of the clause called Residue As mentioned above that there are three elements of the Residue, which are Predicators, complements and Adjuncts of the teachers’ feedbacks

We collected more than 400 teachers’ feedbacks and classified as follows:

a Teachers’ Feedbacks in form of Complete Sentences

b Teachers’ Feedbacks with Inversion

c Teachers’ Feedbacks in form of Truncated Sentence

Table 4.1 Summary of Teachers’ Feedbacks as Complete

& Truncated Sentence in view of Clause as Exchange

SENTENCE Teachers’ Feedbacks as Clause as Exchange

Subj Finite Compl Subj Finite Pred Mood Mood Resi RESIDUE

COMPOUND

Mood comment adjunct

Complement Subj Finite Compl Mood Residue Mood Residue

INVERSION

Complement Subject Finite Residue Mood

Modifier Head

Subject Finite Complement

Mood Residue

PRED

(Suppressed subject) (Suppressed verb)

Subject Finite Pred

Mood Residue

PRED

(Suppressed subject) (Suppressed

verb)

Predicator Subject Finite Residue Mood

In this section, we analyzed teacher’s feedback as clause of

message The teacher’s feedback is thus organized in theme and

rheme Theme is the part that comes first in teacher’s feedback and

rheme remains the following part In general, theme carries the old information while the rheme carries the new

Table 4.2 Summary of Teachers’ Feedbacks as Complete

& Truncated Sentence in view of Clause as Message

Theme (unmarked) Rheme

just

the answer

looking for Comment

(Suppressed verb)

(Suppressed determiner)

a Teachers’ Feedbacks in form of Complete Sentences

b Teachers’ Feedbacks with Inversion

c Teachers’ Feedbacks in form of Truncated Sentence

4.2 THE EPISTEMIC MEANING OF TEACHERS’ FEEDBACKS

4.2.1 The Factive meaning of Teacher's Feedbacks

The analysis of instances of teachers’ feedbacks in this study reveals that in most cases these feedbacks were used mainly as epistemic markers that function as to signal the teacher’s attitude towards the truth of the proposition of the feedback As a feedback functions as to convey the teacher’s comment to the students’ answers and to the students, teachers’ feedbacks in lectures as encouragements, praises are specialised in manifesting the comment

as a fact or something like that On this semantic basis, the teacher wishes to express his/her feeling and confidence into giving a comment and wishes to show that he/she has evidence to present the state-of-affair mentioned in the feedback as a fact

4.2.2 The Non-factive meaning of Teacher's Feedbacks

In giving feedbacks, the teacher sometimes can show his/her high or low commitment to what he/she believes to be true with his own knowledge In case the teacher lacks adequate evidence, he/she has to show that what he/ she says is his/ her judgement or relative commitment in using non-factive verbs

- Naturally But the most difficult process

was punch cutting

- Exactly Here’s how you get hailstones

Adjectives:

Obvious, right, correct, sure

- Correct Lactation is the production of milk

in the mother

- Right It takes an enormous rocket full of

fuel just to lift one of the shuttles into Earth orbit

Adjectives:

great, interesting, excellent, very good

- Very good, you must have taken a

philosophy class or two

- Well, that's interesting

Nouns:As a matter

of fact, (good/great/

interesting excellent) answer

- As a matter of fact, yeah, there are teams of

some cutting-edge physicists

- Absolutely Great job

Lexcial verbs:

(be) sure, know, see, understand, learn, find, believe

- It was believed that wolves could transform

themselves into medecine men

- Sure, I understand your skepticism, and

that’s becoming a big problem in this field

- You hit it on the nose That’s exactly what

a genericized trademark is

Table 4.4 Summary of the non factive epistemic meaning of

Teachers’ Feedbacks

Epistemic

categories

Linguistic markers

Examples of Teachers’ Feedbacks with epistemic meaning

- It’s possible, but you’ll have to

work for it

- Okay, good And can you

explain a little more about heavy metals?

Nouns:

Good guess/answer/

question;

interesting answer; good point

- Ah ha Good point Let’s go

ahead and address this

- Good guess, but I’m afraid not

I doubt; I think;

I guess; I don’t think, I suppose/suspec t; It seems

point And I guess it shows the

interpretation problem

- Not completely It seems every

time it’s about ready to be accepted, someone else comes up with an opposing idea

Others:

Something like that; You’re getting closer;

That’s a pretty accurate description, I like your reasoning on that, but no, I’m afraid you’re not exactly correct;

Well, that’s what many people believe, but it’s hard to prove; I’m sorry

- I’m afraid that’s not enough

- M:You’re getting closer He

didn’t specifically write children’s books

- M: Well, that’s what many people believe, but it’s hard to

prove It’s like the whole “if a tree falls in the forest and nobody

is there to hear it, does it make a sound” conundrum

- M: OK, that’s a pretty accurate description, but let me just

tighten up your definition a little

A system is defined as a process that is a result of its parts and their interactions