Chapter 1 Introduction
1.1 Background of the Study
Nowadays, more and more people in modem society use E-mail and texting tocommunicate with others all over the world，which indicates that the ability to write inEnglish is essential. However, during the process of English writing, errors areinevitable and no one can skip this process. Learners should not be afraid of makingerrors. Making errors implies the process of language learning. Learners can makeprogress by correcting their errors with certain help. And many scholars believe thatappropriate error treatment is an effective way to improve the accuracy in languagelearning (Tomasello & Herron, 1989). Therefore, to correct the errors is necessary inEnglish writing.In correcting the errors, teacher corrective feedback is usually regarded as a way tofacilitate the learners to overcome difficulties occurred during the process of writing.Teacher corrective feedback about foreign language writing has been studied abroadmore than 30 years and the functions of it have been approved (Cumming, 2009; Ferris,2001; Hyland, 1998; Taras，2006). Some scholars believe that the feedback is helpful forlanguage learners, while others, who hold the opposite opinion, favor no correctivefeedback.
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1.2 Significance of the Study
It is of great significance to study how to improve students' target language writing.Teacher corrective feedback is widely employed in writing process. There is a popularbelief that teacher corrective feedback plays an important role in improving students'English written proficiency. Keh (1990) claimed that feedback is a kind of input from areader to a writer because the reader conveys information to the writer by revision.Accordingly, it is meaningful to study the role of feedback in students' writing. Thereare a lot of researchers investigating the effect of different types of feedback onstudents' English writing，but few focusing on the influence of students' attitudes on theeffectiveness of teacher corrective feedback. The present study mainly investigates therelationship between students' attitudes and the effectiveness of teacher correctivefeedback based on the analysis of students' compositions and interviews.This study provides pedagogical implications for teaching courses on Englishwriting. The findings will help teachers become aware of the importance of providingproper feedback and know how to give effective feedback in improving students'English writing.
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Chapter 2 Literature Review
2.1 Theory of Feedback
Feedbackhelps the language learners improve their accuracy so that they can learn the targetlanguage correctly. Accordingly, the feedback could supply the help to the writers.Garcia (1999) defined feedback as a kind of assistance for the students which couldmake them take notice of the errors and other writing problems they have made in theirdrafts. That is to say, feedback is an indispensible part in improving the students'writing. The feedback can be the comments, questions, the corrections and suggestionswhich the reader gives to the writer. In foreign language learning，the aim of thefeedback is to help the learners express themselves in a correct way. Usually there aretwo forms of feedback in the learners' writing. One form of feedback is the correction，and another form is the general evaluation. The correction refers to the guidance of thewrong use of the vocabulary, the grammar and other errors, which is to correct thedetails. Nicholas，Lightbown & Spada (2001) defined corrective feedback as anindication to learners that their use of the target language is incorrect. This includes avariety of responses that a language learner receives. However, the general evaluation isabout teachers' comments or scores. In order to improve the learners' writtenproficiency, it is indispensable for the learners to have teacher feedback.
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2.2 Scaffolding and Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)
In the real life, the scaffolding is defined as a temporary framework which is usedby the workers to paint the wall, repair something or build something in the high place.That is to say, the scaffolding is equal to the auxiliary for people who want to reach ahigh place. In the second language acquisition (SLA), the scaffolding has the samefunction as in the real life. Wood, Bruner，& Ross (1976，p. 90) defined scaffolding as“A process that enables a child or a novice to solve a probrlem，carry out a task, orachieve a goal which would be beyond his unassisted efforts.” In other words，if a childwants to achieve a goal which is beyond his or her current capability, the child can be8 assisted by adults or competent peers to achieve it. A great number of educators use thescaffolding to describe the teachers, adults or the competent person who teach thechildren or students to get an improvement (Hammond, 2001; Stone, 1988). Benson(1997，p. 126) also defined scaffolding as "a bridge used to build upon what studentsalready know to arrive at something they do not know. If scaffolding is properlyadministered, it will act as an enabler, not as a disabler". In language teaching, thebridge is built by the teachers and the students follow the guidance the teachers make.When the students pass the bridge successfully, they get the new knowledge they do notknow before.
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Chapter 3 Research Methodology ......... 18
3.1 Research Questions ......... 18
3.2 Participants......... 18
3.3 Interview......... 18
3.4 Data Collection......... 19
Chapter 4 Results and Discussion......... 21
4.1 The Overall Analysis of Teacher Feedback.........21
4.2 Case Studies .........26
4.2.1 A Case Study of Ling .........26
4.2.2 A Case Study of Chen......... 32
4.2.3 A Case Study of Shen......... 38
4.3 Summary ......... 42
Chapter 5 Conclusion .........47
5.1 Major Findings .........47
5.2 Pedagogical Implications......... 48
5.3 Limitations and Suggestions .........49
Chapter 4 Results and Discussion
4.1 The Overall Analysis of Teacher Feedback in Participants' Compositions
Swain (1995) admitted the positive influence of teacher feedback. There are plentyof empirical studies of the long-term efficacy of teacher feedback on accuracyimprovement when the learners write a new composition (Bichener, 2008; Sheen, 2007;Sheen, Wright & Moldawa，2009). In other words，the teacher feedback must havedifferent influence on different error classifications. Referring to the error classifications,various errors will exist when students write the compositions. Researchers at home andabroad have divided the errors of writing into different classifications. There are a lot ofmethods to categorize the errors. Chandler (2003) employed the categorization systemof errors, in which the errors were divided into six types. They were the discourseorganization, the sentences' coherence, the grammatical errors, word choice, sentencepattern, and punctuations, capitalization and spelling. Chen (1999) did an empiricalstudy to categorize the common errors in Chinese learners' writings: 1) morphologicalerrors which include the errors of verb in tense，aspect; errors of preposition; errors ofarticles; dangling errors; errors of collocation. 2) syntactic errors which include theconcord of subject and predicate; errors of sentence order; errors of parallel sentenceand emphatic structure; 3) discourse errors which mainly refer to incoherence in thesewritings. There are so many classifications in errors. The published studies about theteacher feedback in improving L2 learners' linguistic accuracy were inclined to indicatethe impact of teacher feedback on several aspects (word choice，grammar error,idiomatic expression and so on) in one research. They seldom devoted attention to onediscreet item.
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Conclusion
The major findings in this study can be summarized as follows.Firstly, the three participants all paid enough attention to their teacher correctivefeedback. Students in writing class cared about the teacher feedback. After completingthe written assignment, they expected the teacher provided them with more detailedinformation and comment. Most students regarded the teacher as the authority of theknowledge. They affirmed the teacher feedback, which implied the feedback isnecessary.Secondly, in increasing students' English written proficiency, both teacherfeedback and students' attitudes play indispensable role. On the one hand，the provisionof teacher corrective feedback is helpful to the students on improving their writingquality. On the other hand，the students' attitudes decide whether they would attachimportance to the feedback their teachers have provided and whether they would correcttheir errors based on the their teachers' feedback. Only when the students treat theteacher feedback carefully and seriously does the teacher feedback work.
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Reference (omitted)
