Error feedback in l2 writing classes how explicit does it need to be

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 M

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 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

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

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

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

INTRODUCTION

1 The problem 1

2 Aims and overview of the thesis 3

1.1 The importance of teaching writing at Foreign Trade University (FTU) 5

1.2 Description of writing textbook and syllabus at FTU 7

1.3 Summary 8

2.1 The importance of error feedback in L2 writing to students of English 9

2.3.2 Self-feedback in L2 writing 24

2.3.3 Conferencing 29

2.3.3.1 Types of conferencing 30

2.3.3.2 Merits and challenges of conferencing 33

2.3.3.3 Effectiveness 34

2.3.3.4 Disadvantages of conferencing 35

2.4 Summary 35

Chapter 3 METHODOLOGY 3.1 Research questions 37

3.2 Research design 38

3.2.1 Subjects of the study 38

3.2.1.1 Students 38

3.2.1.2 Teachers 39

3.2.2 Instruments 40

3.2.2.1 Questionnaire to students 41

3.2.2.2 Questionnaire to teachers 43

3.3 Summary 44

Chapter 4 DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS 4.1 Data analysis 45

4.1.1 Students with traditional teachers’ feedback 46

4.2 Findings 58

4.3 Summary 60

Chapter 5 IMPLICATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 5.1 Implications 61

5.2 Recommendations 66

5.2.1Creating an environment for error feedback 66

5.2.2Peer-feedback activities 66

5.2.3 Self-feedback activities 69

5.2.4 Conferencing activities 74

5.2.5 Technology use 76

5.2.5.1 Word processing 76

5.2.5.2 Word processing tools 77

5.2.5.3 Email/ e-groups use in writing class 78

5.3 Summary 83

CONCLUSION 84

Bibliography

Appendix 1 Student questionnaire

Appendix 2 Teacher questionnaire

Appendix 3 Piloted study

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

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

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

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

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

understanding about the situation The results of the analysis of the questionnaire are ways to improve the way of feedback in L2 writing

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

Chapter 1 provides the background information of the study: the description of teaching writing at FTU and its importance

Chapter 2 reviews the writing-feedback related literature in two parts:

(1) The importance of error feedback in writing to students of English;

(2) approaches to error feedback in writing with a touch on their respective benefits and shortcomings This chapter boasts theoretical background of the study

Chapter 3 presents the methodology of the study This chapter includes research questions, instruments, i.e questionnaires sent to both students and teachers in the study

Chapter 4 analyzes the questionnaire responses in two sections: students’ and teachers’ responses The data analysis is to identify which methods of feedback work with students when they write

Chapter 5 suggests implications and approaches to error feeback to enhance students’ ability to write The chapter provides "tool-box" recommendations to both teachers and students

The thesis hopes to bring practical benefits to teachers and students in error feedback in writing English

Chapter 1 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY

This chapter presents the important information to the study The chapter is to give a brief description of the teaching of English and teaching of writing at FTU as well as its importance

TRADE UNIVERSITY (FTU)

The Foreign Trade University (FTU) was established in 1960 and its purpose since then is to train business people at university level and above The FTU graduates upon graduation will get their jobs at various workplaces such as Government offices, Ministries of Trade, Finance, Planning and Investment, State Bank, Bank for Foreign Trade, Customs Offices, Chambers of Commerce and Industries, import-export Companies, Joint Ventures, Foreign Companies, Domestic Private Companies and other Industries,

The graduates are equipped with knowledge and understanding of international trade, business administration, business communication skills including foreign languages, and other trade and commerce related knowledge

The teaching of English at FTU has always focused on the communicative approach Teachers of English have agreed that learning to write fluently and expressively is the most difficult of the macro skills for all language users regardless of whether the language in question is a first, second or foreign language White (in Nunan, 1989) puts

it in this way:

Writing is not a natural activity All physically and mentally

normal people learn to speak a language Yet all people have to

be taught how to write This is a crucial difference between the

spoken and written forms of language There are other important

differences as well Writing, unlike speech, is displaced in time

Indeed, this must be one reason why writing originally evolved

since it makes possible the transmission of a message from one

place to another A written message can be received, stored and

referred back to at any time It is permanent in comparison with

the ephemeral ‘here one minute and gone the nest’ character of

spoken language-even of spoken language that is recorded on

tape or disk (White, 1981:2)

Business students at FTU are required to have good communication skills both in speaking and writing upon their graduation It is therefore the teaching of writing at FTU has practical purposes for their daily business workings Students are trained to write effectively and efficiently the core followings:

• Letters: enquiries, requests, quotation, quotation-querying, offer, counter-offer, orders, invoices, statements, negotiation, complaints, apologies, thanking customers, handling awkward customers, refusing customers, thanking customers, keeping customers informed, debt payment and credit control, sales, etc

• Business contracts

• Business reports, briefings, press releases, newspaper articles and story

• Business memos, faxes

In addition, students can also take up optional essay writing to prepare themselves for international testing exams such as TOEFL and IELTS

With such broad writing skills, students are required to have the followings:

 Mastering the mechanics of letter formation;

 Mastering and obeying conventions of spelling and punctuation;

 Using the grammatical system to convey one’s intended meaning;

 Organizing content at the level of the paragraph and the complete text to reflect given/new information and topic/comment structures;

 Polishing and revising one’s initial efforts;

 Selecting an appropriate style for one’s audience

Business English is a core course for FTU students, accounting for 1,200 class hours or close to 45% of total class hours in four and a half years In particular, writing skill is especially targeted as an important skill in the program Therefore, it poses responsibility on trainers to “produce” the graduate that are much sought-after by companies

SECOND AND THIRD YEAR STUDENTS AT FTU

• The students of this study have a number of textbooks Second-year students

have Business Opportunity (Vicki Hollett, 1998, OUP, Oxford), Enterprise 3 (by C J Moore and Judy West, 1999, Heinemann International, Oxford), Head

for Business (by Jon Naunton, 1999, OUP, Oxford) as their course books

querying, offer, counter-offer), making progress reports, making business summaries, memos, faxes)

• Third-year students have New International Business English (by Leo Jones and Richard Alexander, 1999, CUP, Cambridge) Business Letter writing (by

Nguyen Trong Dan, 1997, Nha xuat ban giao duc, Hanoi) as their course books Writing focus includes letter-writing (orders, invoices, statements, negotiation, complaints, apologies, thanking customers, handling awkward customers, refusing customers, thanking customers, keeping customers informed), business contracts, reports, briefings, press releases, newspaper articles

• Some suggested optional resources are also available such as Effective writing (by J Withrow, 1987, CUP, New York)

1.3 SUMMARY

This chapter has described the how important the teaching writing to business students

at FTU is, as well as aims and textbooks that students study It has been widely known that the writing skills taught at FTU meet the requirements and needs for daily business operation in reality

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

In the previous chapter, background information to the study has been given Chapter 2 reviews the writing-feedback related literature in two breakdowns: (1) The importance

of error feedback in L2 writing to students of English; (2) approaches to error feedback

in L2 writing with a touch on their respective benefits and shortcomings This chapter presents theoretical background of the study

2.1 THE IMPORTANCE OF FEEDBACK IN L2 WRITING

It is widely acknowledged that feedback on an individual’s performance is important because it facilitates learning and should lead to an improvement in performance through increasing motivation

However, improvements in performance will only be attained if the feedback is specific, timely, accurate, realistic in terms of what is achievable and is expressed in a way which encourages the student to reflect on and change his/her performance if necessary (Beach, 1982)

Byrne (1991: 04) gives an analysis of the importance of feedback:

Writing […] is essentially a solitary activity and the fact that we are required to write on our own, without the possibility of interaction or the benefit of feedback, in itself makes the act of writing difficult

However, giving feedback on writing is not a trouble-free spot in writing pedagogy: numerous studies, and several attempts to grasp the underlying theory, have only come

up with more questions Apparently, the amount and type of feedback, the timing, the mode, the provider, and its subsequent application continue to pose research design

and pedagogical problems

Traditionally, feedbacks students received have been mainly from their teachers Armed with knowledge and authority, teachers are their immediate “bosses” to judge a certain piece of writing Their responses provide critical information to students about their writing performance

It is interesting to note that until very recently, little attention was paid to the nature of these responses Recently, however, attempts have been made to describe and investigate teachers’ responses to student writing, since these responses are believed to

reflect underlying assumptions about the nature and function of writing As two researchers recently put it:

The attitudes that teachers have toward writing strongly influence their own teaching practices, particularly their evaluation of student writing Their beliefs serve as filters that train their attention to qualities (or lack thereof) in student writing (Beach and Bridwell 1984:312)

These investigations reveal that despite the findings of process-oriented studies and their implications for the teaching of writing, practice lags far behind research and theory (see, for example, Sommers 1982) and that this is especially the case for teachers’ responses Sommers’ (1982) study, for example, of teachers’ comments—comments that were “intended to motivate revision’’—indicates that they “take students’ attention away from their own purposes in writing a particular text and focus that attention on the teachers’ purpose in commenting” (149) According to Murray,

“we want our students to perform to the standards of other students, to study what we plan for them to study and to learn from it what we or our teachers learned” (1984:7)

As a result, students revise according to the changes that teachers impose on the text

Other researchers have studied the ways in which teachers appropriate their students’ writing by establishing themselves as authorities Teachers have been found to apply uniform, inflexible standards to their students’ texts and to respond according to the extent to which these texts conform to or deviate from these standards (Moran 1981) They have been found to pre-empt control of important decision-making processes, allowing their own “ideal texts to dictate choices that properly belong to writers” (Brannon and Knoblauch 1982:159) Students are thus given to understand that what they wanted to say is not as important as what their teachers wanted them to say Furthermore, these “ideal texts” may interfere with the teachers’ ability to read and interpret texts, with the result that texts may be misread and comments and reactions may be inaccurate, misleading, or inappropriate (Sommers 1982) In the face of their teachers’ critical judgments, students are unlikely to make any effort to establish that their meaning has been misconstrued; “the writer avoids or alters meaning rather than risk [the teacher’s] disapproval” (Robb 1986) When teachers appropriate writing in this way, they are obviously viewing texts as products to be judged and evaluated Their responses, therefore, do not take into account “the writer’s intention and the actual playing out of that intention in the process of composing” or the “writer’s relation to audience in any full way” (M Rose 1983:116) Thus, the changes and revisions that students incorporate not only may fail to clarify what they intended to communicate but may have little to do with what was originally intended (see, for

example, Brannon and Knoblauch 1982) That texts are viewed as fixed and final products is further corroborated by the overwhelming evidence that teachers attend to surface-level features such as mechanics, usage and style, in what should otherwise be considered first drafts (see, for example, Cohen 1983, Moran 1981, Murray 1982, Sommers 1982) Teachers seemingly “find it difficult to respond to student writing unless they can respond to it as a final draft” (Butturff and Sommers 1980:99-100) Responding in this way to local concerns creates in students a rather limited notion of composing and reinforces the understanding that these concerns must be dealt with at

the outset I use the word reinforces here because studies of revising strategies indicate

that it is surface-level features of writing that inexperienced writers attend to (see, for example, Beach 1976, Sommers 1980, Faigley and Witte 1981, Rubin 1983, Witte 1983) As Flower and Hayes put it, these writers are “locked in by the myopia” of their

“low level goals” (1981:379)

This is not to say that teachers in fact do not believe that certain features of writing are more important than others (see, for example, Faigley 1981), but that the impression their responses create is that local errors are either as important as, if not more important than, meaning-related concerns And this is the impression that stays with students For example, in a study by Schwartz (1984), students were asked to indicate which passage a professor would prefer: one that was clear but lifeless or one that was

colorful and creative but flawed mechanically Students chose the first, assuming that

“grammatical errors are more powerful in effect than voice” (60)

For teachers often address both minor problems and larger issues of rhetoric and content in the same version of a text, their responses are frequently contradictory; while interlinear comments address the text as a finished product to be edited, marginal comments view the text as still developing and evolving (Sommers 1982:151) For example, mechanical errors might be pinpointed at the same time that students are being asked to elaborate upon an idea or make it more interesting Students who receive mixed messages of this kind may be confused because they have no way of knowing whether to focus on the meaning-level changes suggested or the local problems pinpointed Furthermore, they may recognize —although the teacher seemingly does not—that additional clarification may obviate the necessity of making these local changes But students typically do not have to resolve this conflict, for although instructors suggest revision, they paradoxically do not provide for further revision or require it (Johnson 1979) As one researcher has indicated, students may read the comments on their papers, but they rarely write “subsequent drafts in which they can act upon the comments, and thus the improvements desired by their teachers rarely occur” (Tsui 1996) Students are further likely to be confused by the contradictory ways in which different teachers respond Teachers apply very different

and even conflicting standards, based on different experiences, orientations, expectations, preconceptions, and biases (see, for example, Hendrickson 1980) This variation in teachers’ responses is confirmed by a number of investigations (Gere 1984) Schwartz (1984) found that when two pieces of discourse are read by two different readers, the very text that pleases one reader may irritate the other Another recent study (Freedman 1984) found that teachers’ expectations of and assumptions about student writing determine their responses to student writing Even teachers’ anxiety about their own ability to write may be a contributing factor to the way teachers respond to students’ texts (Gere, Schuessler, and Abbott 1984) Williams’ (1981) study

of standards of evaluation indicates that conflicting and contradictory standards are as evident in handbooks and grammar texts as they are in teachers’ responses Given the variation in teachers’ responses and the tendency of textbooks to reinforce or even promote this variation, it is no wonder that teachers’ responses have been found to be

“idiosyncratic” and “arbitrary” (Sommers 1982:149)

Another major finding is that most teachers’ comments are not “text-specific and could

be interchanged from text to text” (Sommers 1982:152) Instead of specific strategies, questions, and suggestions that might help students reshape their texts, students are given vague prescriptive advice (see, for example, Butturff and Sommers 1980)—perhaps because, as one trainer of writing teachers has suggested, teachers are not

capable of doing “accurate or creative diagnoses of student writing” (Moran 1981:70) These vague prescriptions take the form of marks and comments that represent

“complex meanings which remain locked in [the teacher’s] head” (Butler 1980:270) While teachers may assume that these prescriptions have “universally-accepted definitions” that transmit the same “values” to their students, this is not the case (Schwartz 1984) As one study (Tsui 1996) has indicated, when cues remain implicit, whether at the conceptual, structural, or sentential level, these responses are often misunderstood, misinterpreted, and unhelpful to students in their efforts to rethink the problems being addressed

This is not to say, however, that ESL teachers have no guidelines to follow when responding to student writing On the contrary, a descriptive survey (Cumming 1983)

of responding procedures outlines the techniques and practices that have been recommended to ESL professionals and that are “seemingly implemented on a regular basis” (2) by these teachers The following illustrates one such recommendation:

Error correction is crucial for learning the writing skill, and correction techniques are essentially the same for controlled and free composition Using a set list of correction symbols, teachers indicate student errors focusing on the teaching point and previously learned patterns (Bruder and Furey 1979:71)

It is obvious from the survey that despite the recent influence of process-oriented research (see, for example, Taylor 1981, Zamel 1982, 1983, Raimes 1983), teachers are still by and large concerned with the accuracy and correctness of surface-level features

of writing and that error identification—the practice of searching for and calling attention to error—is still the most widely employed procedure for responding to ESL writing Cumming offers the following rationale for this almost obsessive preoccupation with error:

Error-identification appears to be ingrained in the habitual practices of second language teachers who perhaps by reason of perceiving their role solely as instructors of the formal aspects of “language” therefore restrict their activities

to operations exclusively within the domain of formal training rather than that

of cognitive development (1983:6)

Current research tells us that teachers respond imprecisely and inconsistently to errors (Hendrickson 1980) Experimental studies have been undertaken to determine whether certain correction strategies seem to be more effective than others (see, for example, Cardelle and Corno 1981, Chaudron 1983, Cohen 1983, Robb, Ross) While studies of this sort help us explore the effects of certain feedback treatments, they clearly do not increase our understanding of what teachers actually do in response to their students’

written texts One investigation (Miller 1982) that attempted to determine how teachers respond to ESL writing examined the responses of university faculty from various academic disciplines Unfortunately, the texts evaluated consisted of isolated sentences containing typical ESL errors rather than total units of discourse Thus, while the findings of this study—particularly those that indicate that variables such as age and academic area seem to influence how faculty react to certain errors—are intriguing, responding to errors in sentences out of context is so unlike what professors typically

do that the findings probably bear little relationship to real responding behavior

My own exploratory examination of how FTU university faculty respond to ESL writing raises additional questions about the Miller (1984) study and its findings My analysis indicates that faculties do not react according to some hierarchy of error types Rather, they apply certain modes of responding: reacting to all errors, reacting to very few One recent study (Cumming 1983) does provide insight into how ESL teachers respond to student writing An examination of these teachers’ responses to the same student paper suggests that error identification is in fact the most widely employed technique, that teachers’ responses to the same text differ, and that the application of error-identification techniques varies considerably Analysis of the think-aloud protocols of three of the teachers provides other interesting data For example, particular responding techniques seem to affect how teachers view and react to the text

It is not surprising, given these differences, that these teachers “differ[ed] markedly in

their assessments” of the written text This study certainly begins to ask the right question about ESL teachers’ responses and provides revealing data However, as in other experimental studies, the teachers were responding within a context created by the researcher They may have been influenced not only by what they thought the researcher was looking for, particularly as they thought aloud about their responding processes, but by the very act of responding aloud Thus, the extent to which their responses represent their actual reactions to and comments about authentic texts in real instructional settings cannot be determined

Fathman and Whalley (1990) conducted qualitative research among 72 U.S students of college ESL into the effect of teacher feedback on grammar and composition They found that such feedback resulted in improvement: it helped students identify and correct their own errors Another result questioned the general validity of Zamel's (1985) claim that teachers' comments were often too vague or to act upon: the "general comments giving encouragement and suggesting revisions" (Fathman & Whalley,

1990 p 186) were reported as factors that contributed to the development of rewritten versions of students' scripts While this appears to have been true of writing improvement in the short run, Zamel's (1985) observation that there is still little evidence that such improvement is long lasting was not refuted Specifically, she claimed that teachers' comments often lacked consistency and relevance from the point

of view of subsequent revision: they tended to highlight each and every grammatical error, favoring correct yet non-communicative prose while almost totally ignoring the content of the scripts

To collect information on student attitudes to and preferences for receiving feedback, Dheram (1995) conducted a case study among five EFL students in Britain She investigated whether students preferred comments on grammar or content, how they responded to feedback, and what the preferences meant for future writing instruction Besides analyzing questionnaire and interview data, Dheram reviewed pre-feedback and post-feedback drafts and found that students became aware of the importance of revision as part of discovering meaning Perhaps the most relevant finding was that content should enjoy top priority in teachers' response

When a process approach is adopted, it is crucial that students are helped in the development of their scripts at every stage To add further assistance, Frankenberg-Garcia (1999) put forth the innovative suggestion that feedback could be given even before a text is produced: at the initial stages of the development of ideas for a composition This view reverberates the procedure whereby a classroom is seen as a workshop, with part of the time turned into intervening in the writing process Frankenberg-Garcia (1999) pointed out that text-based feedback had serious limitations because the type of feedback students need most cannot be adequately given without having hard evidence of the types of decisions (good and bad) that students typically

make when composing The written text may be polished with little need for grammatical or compositional change, yet it may not reflect writer intention if the student had major difficulty with an idea, grammatical unit or vocabulary item and decided to apply an avoidance strategy, thus fossilizing a problem To deal with the actual composing process, then, she argued, we need to gather information on the specific needs students have and incorporate that information in the verbal or written feedback that is given on the processes, rather than a draft She emphasized that this approach was not intended to replace text-based writing feedback rather, to complement it

2.3.1 Peers’ feedback in L2 writing

Peer feedback is yet another way to foster creativity Peers who understand the assignment may be able to draw new connections and/or stimulate more creative ideas through their examination of another student’s progress (Nitko, 1995)

The peer feedback forms works as both peer pressure and as a release valve Students know going into the project that they will evaluate their peers and be evaluated by them This causes them to work harder on the project than they might if their grade only were at stake On the rare occasion when a student does not do a fair share, the other members of the group have an opportunity to reveal that problem

Summarizing recent research in the field of peer response to learner writing, Grabe and Kaplan extracted four factors that seem to contribute to the effectiveness of the approach (1996, p 387)

The first is the individual's conviction that response from one's peers will be beneficial This seems to be an area where the teacher's role is paramount: helping to create the conditions for a group to act as a group is a pedagogical responsibility (for group dynamics, see also Dörnyei & Malderez, 1997)

The second factor influencing effectiveness is the formal training students receive in peer response and revision Although some teachers were shown to oppose structured and formalized guidelines for their students in such programs, students preferred when the writing teacher helped them define the rules

Listed as the third one (but probably coming first for most L1 and L2 writers chronologically) is the awareness of goals students have in asking for and providing a response

The fourth factor refers to the requirements that once such practice is begun, participants are held responsible for their involvement

Already, however, evidence suggests that not all students are willing to act on the suggestions by their peers For example, a study conducted by Sengupta (1998) revealed that among a class of Cantonese EFL students there was a marked reluctance

to carrying out peer evaluation Students saw the job of commenting on their scripts to belong primarily to the teacher, and for these participants the reader who counted was the expert instructor The finding in Huang (1995) corroborates this result: in the pilot study, 22 Chinese university students of writing were assigned to English and Chinese discussion groups and reported little enthusiasm about providing feedback to motivate revision in a two-draft writing task Huang hypothesized that for such group involvement to promote peer revision a longer experience may be necessary

In the ESL context, a slightly different result was obtained in Mangelsdorf's study (1992) Among a culturally heterogeneous mix of university students in Arizona, it revealed that often peers were unable to provide the type of feedback that would be helpful for them to draft a script However, a positive element of the process, according

to the interviewees, was that "peer reviews led [the students] to consider different ideas about their topics and helped them to develop and clarify these ideas" (Mangelsdorf,

1992, p 278) Once the improvement in writing quality became obvious, participating students were more willing to share and act on suggestions in their revisions

As for the EFL view, an Asian study aimed to establish correlation between holistic rating of EFL college writing quality and quantity of revision (Sato, 1990) It investigated Japanese students' success in a picture description task Of the ninety participants, three levels of writers were identified The study reported that although no

groups made significantly more successful revisions in their final drafts The paper

suggested (Sato, 1990, p 157) that further research was needed to study the relationship between different tasks and levels of achievement, and that including variables of proficiency in the target language and of writing expertise would enhance the validity of findings

Myers (1997) gave a detailed account of her writing course for ESL students in which she adopted the technique of sentence reformulation Using simple codes, she returned papers that students were requested to amend by incorporating the revisions she had

made By doing this, students prepared a clean copy with no grammatical inaccuracies so that they could focus in class on the content of their peers' writing, thus participating in a program that relied heavily on teacher direction in terms

of language correction, but which eventually enabled students to exercise the role

of peer editors of ideas in the sessions

2.3.2 Self-feedback in L2 writing

According to Blue (1994), interest in self-feedback developed out of a more general interest in the area of autonomous learning or learner independence However, it has been seen as one of the more problematic areas of self-directed learning It is widely recognized that learners might not have the necessary experience to make judgements

of this sort Despite these criticisms, there are a number of reasons why self-feedback should be encouraged in language classes

Mats Oscarsson (1989), a noted scholar in the field of self-feedback, gives six different reasons why it can be beneficial to language learning First, he stresses that self-feedback promotes learning, plain and simple It gives learners training in evaluation which results in benefits to the learning process Secondly, it gives students a raised level of awareness of perceived levels of abilities Training in self-feedback, even in its simplest form, like asking “What have I been learning?” encourages learners to look at course content in a more discerning way Thirdly, it is highly motivating in terms of goal-orientation Fourth, through the use of self-feedback methodologies, the range of feedback techniques is expanded in the classroom As a result of using self-feedback, the learner broadens’ his/her range of experience within the realm of assessment Fifth,

by practicing self-feedback, the students participate in their own evaluation (Dickinson 1987) They, in effect, share the assessment burden with the teacher Finally, by successfully involving students in their own assessment, beneficial post-course effects will ensue

Self-assessment is not an alien concept to human behavior All human beings are involved, either consciously or subconsciously, in an on-going process of self-

evaluation Until recently, however, the value of this human process was largely ignored in pedagogy Learners were rarely asked to assess their performance, much less have a say in the construction of evaluation instruments Pedagogically, the term self-assessment was rendered all but oxymoronic

In the last decade, with the increased attention to learner-centered curricula, needs analysis, and learner autonomy, the topic of self-assessment has become of particular interest in testing and evaluation (Blanche 1988; Oscarson, 1998) It is now being recognized that learners do have the ability to provide meaningful input into the assessment of their performance, and that this assessment can be valid In fact, with regard to second and foreign language, research reveals an emerging pattern of consistent, overall high correlations between self-assessment results and ratings based

on a variety of external criteria (Blanch 1988; Oscarson 1984, 1997, 1998; Coombe

1992) In spite of these results, however, issues concerning the validity and reliability of language self-assessment need to be addressed

Whereas formal or standardized tests have already established construct, predictive, and concurrent validity and reliability indices, the question of the validity and reliability of learners' estimates still remains a question Because of the complex process nature of the language learning process, constructs of what is being measured

need to be clarified To be able to validly assess their behavior, learners need to know,

in non-linguistic, simplified and practical terms, exactly what it is that they are trying

to assess Many language constructs, such as proficiency and communicative competence, are elusive and must be clearly and concisely operationalized and communicated to ensure the validation of assessment among learners The criterion by which learners are to assess themselves may be opaque and thus add an additional threat to validity

An additional consideration of validity is whether different language skills are comparable for assessment They probably are not, and learners must be made aware of this Linguistic analyses may require a different focus than communication does

Receptive skills may demand different attention than productive skills The degree to

which language learners are able to carry out valid self-assessments will depend on the nature of the skills being assessed and the relative accuracy with which learners can define and use, in concrete, behavioral terms, the skills they are to assess

The reliability of learners’ judgement is subject to variables whose influence on the

learner is difficult to establish Extraneous factors, such as parental expectations, career aspirations, amount of exposure to foreign languages, age, past academic record and lack of training in self-assessment affect the accuracy of self-estimates and must, in

some way, be accounted for Furthermore, because reliability, like validity, depends on systematic analysis, the question is raised as to whether short term self-assessments lend themselves to consistency They most likely do not Learners need to be asked to assess their performance on a regular basis Their performance must be carefully and closely linked with the particular skills that they are working on Learner ability to

accurately self-assess language performance is not automatic Therefore, constant feedback within a formative, as well as summative framework is a crucial factor for obtaining reliable self-assessment results

There is strong evidence that self-assessments yield consistent and homogeneous results; indeed, research indicates that learner self-assessment is working in situations that were traditionally reserved for standardized tests (i.e placement) (LeBlanc & Painchaud 1985) Nevertheless, self-assessment is not a panacea for all testing problems, and the field is fraught with problematic issues Further research is needed, not only to investigate the many validity and reliability issues involved, but also to help establish the place of self-assessment in the complete measurement and evaluation process

To summarize, there are a number of benefits to using self-assessment in the classroom It allows students to map their knowledge of the language at various points

within a course and/or semester It also assists students in the development of critical faculties Self-assessment also enables students to look at language in more concrete terms Through the use of the techniques mentioned in this article, self-assessment motivates students to look at their strengths and weaknesses and become more autonomous learners which is a fundamental part of the learning process

2.3.3 Conferencing: An Interactive Way to Teach Writing

Writing is a very personal skill, with each individual having his or her own specific problems Writing teachers have long acknowledged these problems and have provided individual feedback to their students The most common form of feedback in the past has been written comments on the student's final draft, pointing out problems and making suggestions for improvement of future papers More recently, many teachers have started making comments on students' initial drafts, offering suggestions for the future development of the final drafts Even so, many ESL/EFL students find written comments problematic

Harris (1986) contends that if a person utilizes a discourse pattern from another language when writing in English, that person's writing is often labeled wordy, lacking coherence, unfocused, or unclear Harris points out that Asian students will circle around a subject, showing it from a variety of tangential views but will not look