Luận văn effectiveness of indirect corrective feedback in english writing at the faculty of english hanoi national university of education

12 Table 2; Frequency of grammatical crrors of experimental group and control group 21 Table 3: Effectiveness of Leachers imdirect corrective feedback to students’ attitudes towards w

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND [INTERNATIONAL STUDLES:

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

NGUYEN THI KHANH

EFFECTIVENESS OF INDIRECT CORRECTIVE

FEEDBACK IN ENGLISH WRITING

AT TIE FACULTY OF ENGLISIT, TANOT NATIONAL

UNIVERSITY OF EDUCATION

(HIỆU QUÁ CỦA CHỮA LỎI GIÁN TIẾP TRONG MÔN

VIET TIENG ANII TAI KIIOA TIENG ANII TRUONG DAI

HQC SU PHAM HA NOK M.A MINOR PROGRAMME TLLESIS:

Field: English Language Teaching Methodology

Code: 60 14 10

HANOL 2013

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND [INTERNATIONAL STUDLES:

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

NGUYEN TH] KHANH

EFFECTIVENESS OF INDIRECT CORRECTIVE

FEEDBACK IN ENGLISH WRITING

AT THE FACULTY OF ENGLISH, HANOI NATIONAL

UNIVERSITY OF EDUCATION

CHIEU QUA CUA CHUA LOI GIAN TIEP TRONG MON

VIET TIENG ANII TAI KIIOA TIENG ANIT TRUONG DAI

HQC SU PHAM HA NOD

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Ficld: English Language Tcaching Methodology

Code: 614 10

Supervisor: Nguyén Thi Bach Thau, M.A

TIANOT 2013

4 Method of the study, ¬— ¬— ¬— 3

1.2.1, Definitions of corrective feedback

1.2.2 Types af corrective feedback to students’ writing

1.2.2.1 Sell-assessment

1.2.2.2 Peer feedback ¬— ¬—

1.2.2.3 Teacher’s feedback

1.3 Tcachers" corroctive fcodback stratcpics ¬— seo 11

1.4 Effectiveness of teacher's indirect corrective feedback 13

1.5 Students’ reactions and altiLudes tuwards teachers’ indirect corrective fecdback se ke ke ke eo 14

3.1.2 Students’ reactions and attitudes towards teacher’s indirect

corrective feedback from survey questionnaires

3.2.2 Students’ reactions and attitudes towards teacher’s indirect

corrective feedback from survey questionnaires

3.2.2.3 Effectiveness of teacher’s indirect corrective feedback on

3.2.2.4 Students’ attitudes towards the valuc of teacher’s indirect

3.2 Students’ expectations for better use of ieacher’s indirect

4.1, Recommendations for the teachers ke ke wee BF

v

2, Limitations of the study

3 Suggestions for further study

Facully of English : Ilanoi National University of Education

vii

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Ellis’ table of feedback types (2009 p.98) 12

Table 2; Frequency of grammatical crrors of experimental group and control group

21

Table 3: Effectiveness of Leachers imdirect corrective feedback to students’

attitudes towards writing %6

Table 4: ‘the students’ perception about the effectiveness of teacher’s indirect

Table 5: Students’ sources to self-correct their grammatical errors 29 Table 6: The students’ progross in writing accuracy after 6 weeks of the study 31

Table 7: Students’ suggestions for better use of teacher’s indirect corrective Feedback iecssessiesentseenininee sesesntnee sesesntnee sesesntnee ¬-

viii

LIST OF CHARTS

Chart t: Students’ feeling about the use of indirect corrective feedback 2

Chart 2: Students’ difficultics when the teacher uses indirect corrective feedback in

Chart 3: The suitability of teacher’s indirect corrective feedback to the students and

Chart 4: Percentage of errors corrected by students after receiving teacher’s indirect

PART A: INTRODUCTION:

1 Rationale

Nowadays, English is considered a3 an intemational language in the world with over 1,500 million speakers (Crystal, 2003) Recently, Communicative Tamguage Teaching (CLI) has been widely used in Vietnam In such approach, students are taught four main skills: reading listening, speaking and writing However, nol many students like writing and are able to write well Le (2008), when investigating the teaching and learning English among high schools in Can Tho, found that only 6.9% of the Vicwmamese students want to lear writing In my own (caching experience, iL was found that most students in Faculty of Linglish, Llanci National University of iducation have similar problems with their writing These problems are (1) they have a lot of grammatical errors in their wriling, and (2) they have negative altitudes towards learning writing Thus, how to improve students’ writing as well as to change their

alitudes towards wriling aclivities has greatly altracted my allenticn,

‘Through a review of literature, although the effect of written corrective feedback is still

controversial, numerous studies on the use of corrective [eedback mì wrting classes

have shown that corrective feedback including indirect feedback can be applied in

writing classes to improve students’ writing accuracy (Liu, 2008: Kaweera, 2008,

Ferris, 2000, Ferris et al., 2001) Beside teacher’s writing instructions, in many cases,

teacher’s correction and comments oan help to solve the problems of students’ writing

accuracy and their attitudes towards writing In other words, teacher's good feedback

stralegics may give students stimulation for revision and motivation to maintain their

interest in writing,

1n Vietnam, there has been some research on teacher’s written corrective feedback such

as Le (2011) or Tran (2011) which focuses on the high school setting but none of the

studies has investigated the effect of indirect corrective feedback on students’ writing

in university setting

lior all the mentioned reasons, the researcher wishes to conduct a study entitled

“Effectiveness of indirect corrective feedback in English writing at Faculty of English, Hanoi National Unive f Education”

2 Aims of the study

This current study aims at (1) examining the effectiveness of written indirect corrective

feedback on improving wrilmg accuracy of the second-year sLudents al Faculty of

Lnglish, Llanoi National University of ducation (OL, LINUL); (2) investigating the

students’ attitudes towards the use of teacher’s indirect corrective feedback and (3)

proposing some recommendations of the use of teacher’s writlen indirect, corrective feedback in writing classes

In short, the researela paper aims to address the following questions:

1 To what extent docs indirect corrective feedback stralegy have offeels on second year students’ writing accuracy at ’aculty of English, [lanoi National University of

Education?

2 How do second-year students at Faculty of English, Hanoi National University of”

Education react to teacher’s indirect corrective feedback on their writing?

3 Whal can be doue to improve students’ writing by employing indirect corrective

feedback?

3 Scope of the study

Tn fact,

acher’s correclive feedback can be given am both oral and wnitten forms,

directly and indirectly on students’ writing However, within the framework of a graduation paper, the researcher only focuses on the teacher’s written indirect

corrective feedback

tà

In addition, due to the limit of this study, the participants selected are not all second- year students at FOL, IINUT but only students from the two classes that the researcher dưcctly teach

4 Method of the study

Analysis of students’ writing and questionnaires were utilized to collect the data for the

whole paper 50 second-year sludents al FOR, HUNE were divided into lwo groups:

one experimental group and one control group ‘he 26 students in the experimental group were given teacher's indirect corrective feedback while the 24 students in the control group wore given dircet correolive Lecdback without any revision required All the SO students were asked to do a pre-test at the beginning of the study and a post-test after 6 weeks of the study All the 50 students’ writing papers in the two tests were

collected, measured and analyzed

After the sixth week of the study, 26 students from the indirect corrective group were

asked to complete questionnaires on their reactions and attitudes towards the teacher’s

use of indirect corrective feedback in class After that, all the questionnaires were collected, analyzed and discussed

5 Significance of the study

As mentioned above, only few researchers have investigated the effectiveness of

teacher’s wrillen indirect corrective feedback on students’ writing in universily setting

Thus, the thesis van help to fill the gap in literature

Moreover, in practice, the suggeslions presented in this sludy may parlly contribute Lo the enhancement of the effectiveness of teacher's indirect corrective feedback to

second-year students at FOL, IINUI in particular and to university students in general.

6 Organization of the study

The study consisls of lee parts:

Part A — Introduction — states the problems and rationale of the study, the aim, the

scope, the method, the significance and the organization of the study

Part B - Developmen!

Chapter 1 — Literature review — synthesizes the results of other research that are

televant to (hs sLucly

Chapter 2 — Methodology — describes the methods utilized in the study

Chapter 3 lindings and Discussion presents and analyses the collected data from

studenls’ wriling and questionnaires, provides the discussion based on the findings

Chapter 4 — Recomendations — makes some suggestions for better use of teacher’s

indirecl corrective feedback Lo improve sLudents’ writing accuracy and change their

attitudes towards writing at OL, LINUL

Part € — Conclusion — summarizes (he main issues mentioued in the research, oullimes

the limitations of the study and makes suggestions for further research

PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Process writing

1.1.1 An overview of process approach

Since early 1970s, what is now called the writing process has been taken into consideration as an approach of teaching writing Nowadays there is a shift from the

focus on students! written products to allention to studerts' wring process

Product writing is considered a traditional approach in which writing is defined as “an

act of tanslerring ideas lo paper with attention neither to the eortext nor to the stages

writers go through when creating a text” (Aes, 2010, p.2) In their study on

approaches to teaching writing, Badger, R & While, G (2000) state that “product-

based approaches see writing as mainly concemed with knowledge about the structure

of language, and the writing development as mainly the result of imitation of input in

the Torm ef lexls provided by the Leacher.” In a werd, il can be understood that this

approach to writing mainly concentrates on the product of writing rather than on the process of writing,

On the contrary, process approach in writing is demonstrated in Ilarmer (2001, p 257)

2s an approach in which the teacher pays allention lo various stages thal any piece of

writing gocs through It is also noted that “Writing in process approaches is scon as predominantly to do with linguistic skills, such as planning and drafting, and there is much less emphasis on linguistie knowledge, such as knowledge about grarmmar and

text structure” (Badger, R & White, G 2000; 154)

Tn recent years, the provess approach to wriling has been scen as an mnprovement over

the traditional methods of writing instruction Writing is no longer considered to be a

“linear and fragmented procedure” (Hairston, 1982, p.78) with the mere target at an error-free product Rather, it is “a cyclical process during which writers can move back and forth on a continuum, discovering, analyzmg, and synthesizing ideas” (Hughey, ot

al, 1983 as cited in Joe, 2006, p.48) While product approach is described by Nunan(1999:75) as “reproductive language work”, Stanley (2003:1) considers the

process approach

‘a ervative acl which requires lime and posilive lecdhack lo be done well.” Moreover, one of the major strengths of process approach is that it helps

sludenls to improve the accuracy of a text by revising the drafis of writing The

omphasis on a series of drafts on the same topic proves helpful to students because

thanks to writing and revising the writing, students can gradually discover the way to express their ideas approprialcly

1.1.2 Stages in a writing process

As stated by many researchers, the writing process consists of different stages

However, the stages in wriling process are defined im different ways According to

Tribble (1996), the process approach identifies four stages in writing: (1) prewriting, (2) composing/drafting, (3) revising, and (1) editing

(1) Prewriting: Prewriting includes anything done by the writer before he writes a draft: deciding a topic, brainstorming ideas, outlining, etc

(2) Composing/drafting: In this stage, the writers do actual writing and refining of their sentences and paragraphs

(3) Revising: In this stage, the writers deal with the content of the writing:

1.6 refining Lex organization, slructure, idea connections or other addition and

connection

(4) Editing: Tn this stage, the writers work on the mechanies of writing such

as spellings and punetuations

Writing in the abovementioned viewpoint is a one-way process in which there is no involvement of a reader Reid (1993) provides a different view in dividing writing stages into basic stages such as planning, drafting, revising, and editing, and four other stages extemnally imposed by teachers, namely pre-writing, responding, evaluating and post writing This distinction is helpful for teachers to apply the most productive intervention in students’ wriling process in classroom conlexL The following is a summary of the stages in the view of Reid (1993)

(1) Pre-writing: Tn (ins stage sludents are molivaled to generale ideas by brainstorming and discussion

(2) Planning: Students organize ideas into a mind map, spider gram or linear form which helps students easily know the main points as well as the organization of those main points in the required form of writing

(3) Drafting: Students write the first draft At this stage, attention should be

paid to the fluency of the writing and the choice of language in reference to

the target audience

(4) Responding: This stage is important to the success of studerts’ writing, Il

gives them a sense that their writing is purposeful In the context of teaching

writing, this stage also brings in assistance for students to improve their

writing through feedback of the teacher or fellow students

(5) Revising: When drafts are returned, students review their texts on the basis

of teacher or peor feedback

{6) Editing: At this stage, students do some finishing work of their writing for teacher's evaluation Students make final "readjustments and check accuracy

so thal the texLis maximally accessible 1o the reader” (Hedge, 1988, p.23)

(7) Evaluating: At this stage, the writing teachers assign scores which may be analytical (based on specific aspects of writing ability) or holistic (based on

a global mtorprotation of the effectiveness of that writing) (8) Post-writing: ‘This stage may involve the cooperation between students and teachers on the finished product to publish, share, read aloud and transform

ions of corrective feedback

Corrective feedback, in the view of Lightbown and Spada (1999), is any indication to the lenmers thai their use of the target language is incorrect This includes various

responses that the leamers receive

Error correction is one kind of teacher's feedback and il can be used milerchangeably with the term "corrective feedback" According to James (1998:256-257), correction

can be understood in "three senses" In the first sense, correction can be understood as

feedback, which informs learners that there is an crror, and leaves them to diagnose

and repair it themselves In the second sense, it refers to proper correction in which Tearners are not only informed aboul the error but, alse shown how to repair il, or event

given an altemative ‘[he third sense of error correction is remediation, which means

carrying out error analysis that explains why an error is committed with the view to

prevent its recwrence.

According to Hillis (2009), corrective feedback provides the students with direct or indirect information about what is unacceptable Ile also states that corrective feedback often take the form of a response to leamers’ linguistic errors

The definition of Bllis (2009) seems to be the most suitable and closely involves in the

scope of this sludy because if mentions the teacher’s response to the students’ errors in

a direct or indirect way Ilence, this definition is adapted in this study

1.2.2 Types of corrective feedback to students’ writing

Written feedback in wntmg can be divided into three main types, namely sclf-

assessment, peer feedback and teacher's feedback

critically and analytically af thew writmg and Lo take more responsibility for what they

write Being involved in the process of solf-cvaluation, the students are no longer

simply passive recipients of feedback, but become active participants in evaluation”

However, self-assessment is more time-consuming than the other types of feedback Also, it is unsuitable way for students with low Lnglish proficiency to revise their

writing

1.2.2.2 Peer feedhack

Peer feedback is a practice in language education where feedback is given by one

student to another According to Bartels (2004), peer feedback means feedback from

the fellow students If students are working on the same assignment together, peer feedback means exchanging drafts and comments on each other’s drafts

Peer feedback is used in writing classes to provide students more opportunities to learn from each other Peer feedback broadens leamers’ involvement by giving them the additional roles of reader and advisor to go with that of writer Further, suuetunng face-to-face discussion into the feedback process provides students the opportunity to engage in constructive controversy, which may lead to insights and greater task

cngagemenl (Johrsơn & Johnson, 1987)

However, there are still some problems in the use of peer feedback One of the major problems is that the quality of the responses is questioned Students often feel that their peers offer unspecific, unhelpful and even incorrect feedback because they lack the knowledge of the target language or he knowledge in cerlain specific content areas (Allaei & Connor, 1990) Another problem with peer written feedback is the students’ characteristics Many students may not easily accept the idea that their peers are qualified enough to evaluate their writing (Rollinson, 2005)

1.2.2.3 Teacher’s feedback

In the light of process writing approach, teachers play an important role in helping studenls to revise their writing dralls, Teacher’s corrective feedback, lo some extent, is the teacher's correction and ean be defined as teachers’ indication to leamers' errors,

which takes the forms of implicit or explicit correction

Some researchers indicate that students favor corrective feedback from teachers becanse they believe that they will benefit greatly from it (Teki, 1991; Radecki & Swales, 1988) Studies by Ashwell (2000), Cardelle and Como (1981), and Femis (2003) conclude that there is a positive correlation between student writing accuracy

and teacher corechive [eedback Furthermore, Ellis (1998) and Lightbrown (1998)

state that thanks to teacher corrective feedback adult learners can avoid fossilization and maintain their progress in their second language proficiency

10

1.3 Teachers' corrective feedback strategies

Rod Ellis (2009) mentions six main strategies to provide corrective feedback which are

described in Kigure 1 below

1 Direct Cl ‘The teacher provides students with

the correct form

¢.g, Lalande(1982) and Rob et

This takes the form of underlining, and the uses of cursors to show

omissions in the students’ text

This takes the form of an

indication in the margin that an error or errors have taken place in

Fewer studies have employed this method (e.g Robb et al 1986)

‘Teacher writes code in the margin (eg ww = wrong word: art =

b.Brict

grammatical

descriptions

Teacher numbers crrors in text and

writes a grammatical description

for each numbered error at the

bollom of the Lext

Ferris and Roberts 2001;

Chadler 2003) Sheen (2007) compared the effects of direct Cl’ and direct

‘This concerns whether the teacher

attempts to correct all (or most} of

the students’ errors or selects one

or two specific types of errors to

correct This distinction can be

concordance file that provides

examples of correcl usage

Milton (2006)

§.Reformulation This consists of a native speaker’s

reworking of the students’ entire

text to make the language seem as

nativeltke as posstbke whike keeping the content of the original

intact

Sachs and Polio (2007)

compared the eftects of direct correction and reformulation

on students’ revisions of thei

text

Table I: Ellis’ table of feedback types (2009 p 98)

Basing on Hillis table of feedback types above, Sheen (2011) makes some slight changes In his view, there are seven types of feedback namely (1) direct non-

motalinguistic written correction, (2) direct metalinguistic written correction; (3)

indirect written correction (non-located error); (4) indirect written correction (located error); (5) indirect written correction using error codes; (6) indirect metalinguistic

wrillent correction; (7) reformulation

Tn the two versions of the Lypology of wrillen corrective feedback above, lhe contents

are the same but the categorization is different This current research adapt Ellis*

typology of written corrective feedback in which indirect corrective feedback is when teachers indicates or lovates the errors using underlining, bul does nol give the corrcet

fom

1.4 Effectiveness of teacher’s indirect corrective feedback

A great number of studies have been investigating whether corrective feedhack has

effects on students’ winiting There is a controversy among researchers abou the

benefits of comective feedback on sccond language leamers’ written outcomes

Truscott (1996) concludes that all error correction is unnecessary, ineffective and even

harmful because it diverts time and cnergy away from more productive aspocis of

writing instruction However, other researchers advocate the usefulness of corrective feedback as well as indirect corrective feedback (Ferris, 1999 & 2006, Ferris and Roberts, 2001; Lalande, 1982 and Hyland & Hyland, 2006)

The comparison between the effectiveness of direct and indirect corrective feedback

may be informative for better understanding aboul the effectiveness of indirect

corrective feedback Of all the studies that consider the effectiveness of direct and indireel corrective feadback, the reported results are somewhat contradictory

13

Some researchers report no significant difference between the direct and indirect corrective feedback (Robb et al, 1986; Ferris and Roberts, 2001), In their research, Robb et al (1986) investigate four types of feedback including direct feedback and indirect feedback where the number of errors was given in each line of text However, the students’ improvement in accuracy in Robb et al (1986) and Ferris and Roberts (2001) is considered only by the revised texts instead of by students’ new pieces of writing, which can not provide adequate evidence of the long-term effect of written

corrective feedback on students’ accuracy

Although it is found in Chandler (2003) that students who receive direct corrective feedback often perform better than students who receive indirect corrective feedback, Lalande (1982) and Lee (2005) report more progress in accuracy for students whose texts are indirectly corrected over those whose texts are directly corrected Also, it is noted in Lalande (1982) that indirect corrective feedback caters “guided learning and problem solving” Therefore, indirect corrective feedback is considered more likely to

lead to long-term learning (Ferris and Roberts, 2001)

All in all, the effectiveness of different kinds of corrective feedback is still argued by

different researchers Beside the research that supports the use of direct corrective

feedback, there are a great number of studies asserting the effectiveness of indirect

corrective feedback Some studies which conclude that direct corrective feedback is

more effective also agree that indirect corrective feedback can have effects on students’

problem solving skill and their long-term learning

1.5 Students’ reactions and attitudes towards teachers’ indirect corrective feedback

Students’ reactions and attitudes towards teachers’ indirect corrective feedback can be understood as how students respond to the indicated errors teachers The student's

14

response frequently takes the form of revision of the initial draft - an important stage in writing process Many studies that have investigated written corrective feedback have centered on whether students are able to make use of the feedback they receive when

they revise their writing

Many studies have described and classified the types of revisions that students make Ferris (2002), for example, identifies a number of revision categories in the redrafts of

146 EST students’ essays In Fernis’s study, it is found that 80.4 per cent of the errors

subject to corrective feedback are eliminated in the students’ revision drafts by

correcting the srror, by deleting the sentence containing the orror, or by making a

correct substitution 9.9 per cent of the errors are incorrectly revised whereas 9.9 percent of errors are left unchanged This study along with a number of others suggests

thal indirect correcuve lecdback is cllective im helping students to climmate errers in

their writing redrafts

Chandler (2003) compares indirect corrective feedback with the opportunity for the students to revise their writing with indirect comective feedback where students have

no opportunity to do 1 Chandler concludes thal there is more significant improvement

in the group that is asked to correct their errors than in the group that receives only the indication of errors Also, this increase in accuracy is nol accompanied by any decrease

in fluency Chandler notes that “what seems to be a crucial factor is having the students

do something with the error correction besides simply receiving it” Clearly,

corrections ean only work il’ students are given a chance to niotice and revise then

Another important issue that should be taken into consideration is students’ attitudes

towards the use of teacher's indirect comective feedback Up to now, contrasting results of this issue have been reported While Leki (1991), Lee (1997) and Liu (2008)

clam the students’ preferences for direel, correction, students’ positive allilndes to teacher’s indirect correction have been reported in the other studies (Lalande, 1982;

Lee, 2005) Chandler (2003) finds that a reason for students’ preferences for direct corrective feedback is that it is the fastest and easiest way to correct their errors However, the students in Chandler’s (2003) rescarch alse agrec that they can remember the mistakes and lear more thanks to indirect corrective feedback ‘Therefore, a measure of the students’ attitudes towards the use of teacher's indirect corrective

feedback could be of great value

16

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY

This research followed a Lwo-group pre-lesl and posi-test design To measure the

effectiveness of indirect corrective feedback on students’ writing with the focus on the

grammatical accuracy both quantitative method (analysis of students’ writing) and quahtalive method (questionmaires) were employed In this study the students

grammatical errors, their reactions and attitudes were measured and investigated

In this study, students were divided into two groups: one experimental group and one control group or six weeks, the two groups were instructed equally and similarly in toms of instruction method Nevertheless, the difference between the wo groups was that the control group received direct corrective feedback from the teacher while the experimental group received indirect correction After six weeks, students in

experimental group were required to do a survey on their reactions and allitudes

towards the use of teacher’s indirect corrective feedback

2.1, Participants

This study investigated 50 second-year slndenis whe major m English at Facully of English, Hanoi National University of ducation (OH, HNUE), Among them 26 students in the experimental group were chosen to do the questionnaires Because this

is a small-scale study, this number of participants appeared to be reasonable and

17

In their second year at university, the students in this study leant how to write

paragraphs and the process writing method was applied in teaching writing at FOE,

HNUE with a carefully designed curriculum In the writing lessons, many materials

were used, but the main course book was “Writing Academic English” in which the

writing process was employed

2.2, Data collection instruments

In this study, analysis of students’ writing and a questionnaire for students were

employed to collect data for the research

2.2.1 Students’ wri

g analysis

The researcher analyzed students’ writing through the two tests: pre-test and post-test

to see the effectiveness of teacher’s indirect corrective feedback on students’ writing

accuracy The analysis only focused on students’ grammatical errors Firstly, the

number of grammatical errors and the total words of each paragraph were counted

Then, because the students’ writing paragraphs are of different length, it was difficult

to compare the errors between the pre-test and post-test Thus, the researcher calculated

the average number of students’ grammatical errors per every ten words This could

make it easy for the researcher to compare the students’ error between the pre-test and

post-test A ten-word ratio was used because students’ writing texts were quite short

(around 180 words)

The number of grammatical errors per ten words was calculated in the following formula:

number of grammatical errors

Number of grammatical error per ten words = total number of words: x10

18

For example, if a student writes a paragraph of 150 words and he/she has 8 errors in that paragraph, the number of grammatical error per ten words = at x10=0.5

The above result means that the student makes approximately 0.5 errors in every 10

words he/she writes

After the average errors per ten words were calculated, the numbers were analyzed using t-test statistical technique to show the difference between the performances of the

two groups

2.2.2 Questionnaire

‘A questionnaire for students was designed to answer the second research question

about the students” reactions and attitudes towards the teacher’s indirect corrective

feedback The survey was only delivered to students in experimental group (K60B)

after six weeks of the research to investigate the students’ reactions and attitudes

towards the teacher's indirect corrective feedback

Nine questions of the questionnaires were multiple choices and open-ended questions

in which the informants were entitled to select items listed or provided with room to

add their own ideas The survey contained five main parts Question 1 aimed at

investigating the students’ feeling about the teacher’s use of indirect corrective

feedback Question 2 was designed to measure the students’ difficulties when they were asked to self-correct the indicated errors Question 3 helped to show the

effectiveness of indirect corrective feedback in changing the students’ attitudes towards

writing Questions 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 were to investigate the students’ perception of the

value of indirect corrective feedback on their writing accuracy And the last question,

question 9 was some expectations of the students for the better use of indirect

corrective feedback

19

2.3 The procedure of data collectian and analysis

Tn the first week of the wriling course, all SỐ students were asked to wrile a paragraph,

and then the teacher collected all students’ paper to analyze only the grammatical

errors they made After that, one class (K60B) was chosen to be an experimental group

and the olber class (K60C) was the control group Tn the following weeks, the students

in the experimental groups were instructed and given indirect corrective feedback,

while the students in the control group were given direct corrective feedback from the

teacher In the sixth week, a post-test was given in which students were asked to write

a paragraph of the same level with the pre-test Both the writing tests (pre-test and post-test) of cach student were collevied lo see improvements of their writing All in all, 100 students’ writing papers were analyzed to evaluate the effectiveness of

teachers’ indirect corrective feedback strategy on students’ writing,

To specify the data, 26 questionnaires were sent to the students in the experimental group (K60B) to see the students’ reactions and attitudes towards the use of teacher’s

indirecl corrective [eedback Queslionmaires [or students were handed aller six wecks

of this research ‘These questionnaires also provided students with enough time to think

and make their best response to given questions All ihe questionnaires to studerits

were thon collected and transcribed into arithmetic figures and analyzed by Microsoft Lixcel on the purpose of investigating the students’ reactions and attitudes towards the

use of teacher’s indirect corrective feedback in writing