Effectiveness of indirect corrective feedback in english writing at the faculty of english hanoi national university of education

Effectiveness of teacher’s indirect corrective feedback on students’ writing accuracy from students’ writing analysis .... Effectiveness of teacher’s indirect corrective feedback to stud

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

NGUYỄN THỊ KHÁNH

EFFECTIVENESS OF INDIRECT CORRECTIVE

FEEDBACK IN ENGLISH WRITING

AT THE FACULTY OF ENGLISH, HANOI NATIONAL

UNIVERSITY OF EDUCATION

(HIỆU QUẢ CỦA CHỮA LỖI GIÁN TIẾP TRONG MÔN VIẾT TIẾNG ANH TẠI KHOA TIẾNG ANH TRƯỜNG ĐẠI

HỌC SƯ PHẠM HÀ NỘI)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Language Teaching Methodology

Code: 60 14 10

HANOI – 2013

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

NGUYỄN THỊ KHÁNH

EFFECTIVENESS OF INDIRECT CORRECTIVE

FEEDBACK IN ENGLISH WRITING

AT THE FACULTY OF ENGLISH, HANOI NATIONAL

UNIVERSITY OF EDUCATION (HIỆU QUẢ CỦA CHỮA LỖI GIÁN TIẾP TRONG MÔN VIẾT TIẾNG ANH TẠI KHOA TIẾNG ANH TRƯỜNG ĐẠI

HỌC SƯ PHẠM HÀ NỘI)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Language Teaching Methodology

Code: 60 14 10

Supervisor: Nguyễn Thị Bách Thảo, M.A

HANOI - 2013

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION i

ACKNOWLEDGEMEMTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iv

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS vii

LIST OF TABLES viii

LIST OF CHARTS ix

PART A: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale 1

2 Aims of the study 2

3 Scope of the study 2

4 Method of the study 3

5 Significance of the study 3

6 Organization of the study 4

PART B: DEVELOPMENT 5

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 5

1.1 Process writing 5

1.1.1 An overview of process approach 5

1.1.2 Stages in a writing process 6

1.2 Corrective feedback 8

1.2.1 Definitions of corrective feedback 8

1.2.2 Types of corrective feedback to students’ writing 9

1.2.2.1 Self-assessment 9

1.2.2.2 Peer feedback 9

1.2.2.3 Teacher’s feedback 10

1.3 Teachers' corrective feedback strategies 11

1.5 Students’ reactions and attitudes towards teachers’ indirect corrective

feedback 14

2.1 Participants 17

2.2 Data collection instruments 18

2.2.1 Students’ writing analysis 18

2.2.2 Questionnaire 19

2.3 The procedure of data collection and analysis 20

3.1 Findings 21

3.1.1 Effectiveness of teacher’s indirect corrective feedback on students’ writing accuracy from students’ writing analysis 21

3.1.2 Students’ reactions and attitudes towards teacher’s indirect corrective feedback from survey questionnaires 23

3.2 Discussion 33

3.2.1 Effectiveness of teacher’s indirect corrective feedback to students’ writing accuracy from students’ writing analysis 33

3.2.2 Students’ reactions and attitudes towards teacher’s indirect corrective feedback from survey questionnaires 34

3.2.2.1 Students’ feeling about the use of indirect corrective feedback 34

3.2.2.2 Students’ difficulties when the teacher uses indirect corrective feedback in class 34

3.2.2.3 Effectiveness of teacher’s indirect corrective feedback on students’ attitudes towards writing 34

3.2.2.4 Students’ attitudes towards the value of teacher’s indirect corrective feedback 35

3.2.2.5 Students’ expectations for better use of teacher’s indirect corrective feedback 36

CHAPTER 4: RECOMMENDATIONS 37

4.1 Recommendations for the teachers 37

4.2 Recommendations for the students 38

PART C: CONCLUSION 40

1 Conclusion 40

2 Limitations of the study 41

3 Suggestions for further study 41

REFERENCES 43

APPENDICES I Appendix I Survey Questionnaires for Students I

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

CF : Corrective Feedback

CLT : Communicative Language Teaching ESL : English as a Second Language

FOE : Faculty of English

HNUE : Hanoi National University of Education

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Ellis’ table of feedback types (2009 p.98) 12 Table 2: Frequency of grammatical errors of experimental group and control group

21

Table 3: Effectiveness of Teacher’s indirect corrective feedback to students'

attitudes towards writing 26

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

corrective feedback on their writing accuracy 28

Table 5: Students’ sources to self-correct their grammatical errors 29 Table 6: The students’ progress in writing accuracy after 6 weeks of the study 31 Table 7: Students’ suggestions for better use of teacher’s indirect corrective

feedback 32

LIST OF CHARTS

Chart 1: Students’ feeling about the use of indirect corrective feedback 23 Chart 2: Students’ difficulties when the teacher uses indirect corrective feedback in

class 25

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

their leaning style 27

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

corrective feedback 30

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

Nowadays, English is considered as an international language in the world with over 1,500 million speakers (Crystal, 2003) Recently, Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) has been widely used in Vietnam In such approach, students are taught four main skills: reading, listening, speaking and writing However, not 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 Vietnamese students want to learn writing In my own teaching experience, it was found that most students in Faculty of English, Hanoi National University of Education have similar problems with their writing These problems are (1) they have a lot of grammatical errors in their writing, and (2) they have negative attitudes towards learning writing Thus, how to improve students’ writing as well as to change their attitudes towards writing activities has greatly attracted my attention

Through a review of literature, although the effect of written corrective feedback is still controversial, numerous studies on the use of corrective feedback in writing 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 can help to solve the problems of students’ writing accuracy and their attitudes towards writing In other words, teacher’s good feedback strategies may give students stimulation for revision and motivation to maintain their interest in writing

In 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

For 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 University of Education”

2 Aims of the study

This current study aims at (1) examining the effectiveness of written indirect corrective feedback on improving writing accuracy of the second-year students at Faculty of English, Hanoi National University of Education (FOE, HNUE); (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 written indirect corrective feedback in writing classes

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

1 To what extent does indirect corrective feedback strategy have effects on year students’ writing accuracy at Faculty of English, Hanoi National University of Education?

second-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 What can be done to improve students’ writing by employing indirect corrective

feedback?

3 Scope of the study

In fact, teacher’s corrective feedback can be given in both oral and written 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

In addition, due to the limit of this study, the participants selected are not all year students at FOE, HNUE but only students from the two classes that the researcher directly teach

second-4 Method of the study

Analysis of students’ writing and questionnaires were utilized to collect the data for the whole paper 50 second-year students at FOE, HUNE were divided into two groups: one experimental group and one control group The 26 students in the experimental group were given teacher’s indirect corrective feedback while the 24 students in the control group were given direct corrective feedback without any revision required All the 50 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 written indirect corrective feedback on students’ writing in university setting Thus, the thesis can help to fill the gap in literature

Moreover, in practice, the suggestions presented in this study may partly contribute to the enhancement of the effectiveness of teacher’s indirect corrective feedback to

second-year students at FOE, HNUE in particular and to university students in general

6 Organization of the study

The study consists of three 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 - Development

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

relevant to this study

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

Chapter 3 – Findings and Discussion – presents and analyses the collected data from

students’ writing and questionnaires; provides the discussion based on the findings

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

indirect corrective feedback to improve students’ writing accuracy and change their attitudes towards writing at FOE, HNUE

Part C – Conclusion – summarizes the main issues mentioned in the research, outlines

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 attention to students' writing process

Product writing is considered a traditional approach in which writing is defined as “an act of transferring ideas to paper with attention neither to the context nor to the stages writers go through when creating a text” (Aires, 2010, p.2) In their study on approaches to teaching writing, Badger, R., & White, G (2000) state that “product-based approaches see writing as mainly concerned with knowledge about the structure

of language, and the writing development as mainly the result of imitation of input in the form of texts provided by the teacher.” In a word, it 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 Harmer (2001, p 257)

as an approach in which the teacher pays attention to various stages that any piece of writing goes through It is also noted that “Writing in process approaches is seen as predominantly to do with linguistic skills, such as planning and drafting, and there is much less emphasis on linguistic knowledge, such as knowledge about grammar and text structure” (Badger, R & White, G 2000: 154)

In recent years, the process approach to writing has been seen as an improvement over

“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, analyzing and synthesizing ideas” (Hughey, et 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 as “a creative act which requires time and positive feedback to be done well.” Moreover, one of the major strengths of process approach is that it helps students to improve the accuracy of a text by revising the drafts of writing The emphasis 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 appropriately

1.1.2 Stages in a writing process

As stated by many researchers, the writing process consists of different stages However, the stages in writing process are defined in different ways According to Tribble (1996), the process approach identifies four stages in writing: (1) prewriting, (2) composing/drafting, (3) revising, and (4) 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; i.e refining text organization, structure, idea connections or other addition and connection

(4) Editing: In this stage, the writers work on the mechanics of writing such

as spellings and punctuations

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 externally 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' writing process in classroom context The following is a summary of the stages in the view of Reid (1993)

(1) Pre-writing: In this stage students are motivated to generate 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 students' writing It 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 peer 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 that the text is maximally accessible to 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 interpretation 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 the texts

In a word, the way Reid (1993) defines stages in a writing process better reflects the process approach since according to him, writing is a multistage process in which the writer has to regularly look back and forth to discover, analyze and revise the writing

1.2 Corrective feedback

1.2.1 Definitions of corrective feedback

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

Error correction is one kind of teacher's feedback and it can be used interchangeably 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 error, and leaves them to diagnose and repair it themselves In the second sense, it refers to proper correction in which learners are not only informed about the error but also shown how to repair it, or even given an alternative The 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 recurrence

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

The definition of Ellis (2009) seems to be the most suitable and closely involves in the scope of this study because it mentions the teacher’s response to the students’ errors in

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

1.2.2 Types of corrective feedback to students’ writing

Written feedback in writing can be divided into three main types, namely assessment, peer feedback and teacher’s feedback

self-1.2.2.1 Self-assessment

Self-assessment is the process of finding and correcting students’ own mistakes It is stated in Wei and Chen (2004) that “Self-assessment encourages students to look critically and analytically at their writing and to take more responsibility for what they write Being involved in the process of self-evaluation, 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 English proficiency to revise their writing

1.2.2.2 Peer feedback

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 learners’ involvement by giving them the additional roles of reader and advisor to go with that of writer Further, structuring 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 engagement (Johnson & 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 the knowledge in certain 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 students to revise their writing drafts Teacher’s corrective feedback, to some extent, is the teacher's correction and can be defined as teachers' indication to learners' errors, which takes the forms of implicit or explicit correction

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

1.3 Teachers' corrective feedback strategies

Rod Ellis (2009) mentions six main strategies to provide corrective feedback which are described in Figure 1 below

A Strategies for

providing CF

the correct form

e.g Lalande(1982) and Rob et al.(1986)

2 Indirect CF The teacher indicates that an error

exists but does not provide the correction

a Indicating +

locating the error

This takes the form of underlining and the uses of cursors to show omissions in the students’ text

Various studies have employed indirect correction

of this kind (e.g Ferris and Roberts 2001; Chandler 2003)

b Indication only This takes the form of an

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

a line of text

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

2 Metalinguistic

CF

The teacher provides some kind of megalinguistic clue as to nature of the error

Ferris and Roberts 2001; Chadler 2003)

Sheen (2007) compared the effects of direct CF and direct

or two specific types of errors to correct This distinction can be applied to each of above options

Most studies have investigated unfocused CF (e.g Chandler 2003; Ferris 2006) Sheen (2007), drawing on traditions

in SLA studies of CF, investigated focused CF

5.Reformulation This consists of a native speaker’s

reworking of the students’ entire text to make the language seem as nativelike as possible while

keeping the content of the original intact

Sachs and Polio (2007) compared the effects of direct correction and reformulation

on students’ revisions of their text

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

Basing on Ellis table of feedback types above, Sheen (2011) makes some slight changes In his view, there are seven types of feedback namely (1) direct non-metalinguistic 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 written correction; (7) reformulation

In the two versions of the typology of written corrective feedback above, the 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 locates the errors using underlining, but does not give the correct form

1.4 Effectiveness of teacher’s indirect corrective feedback

A great number of studies have been investigating whether corrective feedback has effects on students’ writing There is a controversy among researchers about the benefits of corrective feedback on second language learners’ written outcomes Truscott (1996) concludes that all error correction is unnecessary, ineffective and even harmful because it diverts time and energy away from more productive aspects 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 about the effectiveness of indirect corrective feedback Of all the studies that consider the effectiveness of direct and indirect corrective feedback, the reported results are somewhat contradictory

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

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 ESL students’ essays In Ferris’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 error, by deleting the sentence containing the error, 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 that indirect corrective feedback is effective in helping students to eliminate errors in their writing redrafts

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

no opportunity to do it Chandler concludes that 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 not 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 can only work if students are given a chance to notice and revise them Another important issue that should be taken into consideration is students’ attitudes towards the use of teacher’s indirect corrective feedback Up to now, contrasting results of this issue have been reported While Leki (1991), Lee (1997) and Liu (2008) claim the students’ preferences for direct correction, students’ positive attitudes 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) research also agree that they can remember the mistakes and learn 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

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY

This research followed a two-group pre-test and post-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 qualitative method (questionnaires) 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 For six weeks, the two groups were instructed equally and similarly in terms of instruction method Nevertheless, the difference between the two 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 attitudes towards the use of teacher’s indirect corrective feedback

2.1 Participants

This study investigated 50 second-year students who major in English at Faculty of English, Hanoi National University of Education (FOE, 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 manageable

The students chosen in this study all passed an institutional entrance exam into Hanoi National University of Education They started learning English at secondary school and now they are the second-year students at university Most of the participants’ level

of English proficiency is pre-intermediate level though in reality, some students have lower level Moreover, because of the curriculum of the university, self-study skills and

In their second year at university, the students in this study learnt 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’ writing 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:

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 = × 10 = 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

2.3 The procedure of data collection and analysis

In the first week of the writing course, all 50 students were asked to write 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 other class (K60C) was the control group In 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 each student were collected to 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 indirect corrective feedback Questionnaires for students were handed after six weeks

of this research These questionnaires also provided students with enough time to think and make their best response to given questions All the questionnaires to students were then collected and transcribed into arithmetic figures and analyzed by Microsoft Excel on the purpose of investigating the students’ reactions and attitudes towards the use of teacher’s indirect corrective feedback in writing