Investigate students’ attitude toward teacher feedback on their writing performances to help teachers provide effective feedback: A case study from bac son high school

THANH HOA DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
BAC SON HIGH SCHOOL
----------------------------
EXPERIENCE INNOVATION
INVESTIGATE STUDENTS’ ATTITUDE TOWARD TEACHER FEEDBACK ON THEIR WRITING PERFORMANCES TO HELP TEACHERS PROVIDE EFFECTIVE FEEDBACK: 
A CASE STUDY FROM BAC SON HIGH SCHOOL
Writer: Đinh Văn Thiện
Position: Teacher
Topic in the fields of: English
THANH HOA, 2017
INDEX 
CONTENT
Page
A. INTRODUCTION 
3
I. Reasons to choose the theme 
3
II. Aims of the research
4
III. Subjective of the research 
4
IV. Methodology of the research
4
B. CONTENTS 
5
I. Theoretical basis of the study.
5
I.1. Definitions of teacher feedback
5
I.2. Two side issue of attitude toward teacher feedback
5
I.2.1. Negative attitudes towards teacher feedback
5
I.2.2. Positive attitudes towards teacher feedback
I.3. Benefits of feedback
6
7
II. Reality of the issue 
7
II.1. Students’ experiences and attitudes towards teacher feedback
8
II.2. Experimental results
18
II.2.1. Pedagogical implications
18
II.2.2. Prominent achievement
C. CONCLUSION 
19
1. Conclusion
20
2. Proposal 
20
REFERENCE 
21
CONVENTIONS OF ABBREVIATIONS
22
A. INTRODUCTION
I. Reasons to choose the theme
Being the most popular language in the world, English is widely used in many countries all over the world in many fields such as economy, science and technology. It is a useful means that helps human beings promote mutual understanding and connect each other around the world. In Viet Nam, with the global economic integration as well as the innovation of economy and society, English has become more and more concerned by people of all ages, especially the younger generations. Being aware of the importance of English, our government has issued numerous policies and decisions to promote learning and teaching English in order to gain the capacity to use it fluently. As a result, English become a compulsory subject in the school curriculum and an indispensable requirement in the current employment.
Although English is important, numerous students say they do not like studying English and of course they cannot learn it well. In fact, there are many factors affected to the process of language learning such as personality factors, family factors, school factors and social factor. Among these factors, surprisingly, students’ attitude toward teacher feedback is an interesting topic that atracts a large number of researchers because of its remarkable influence onto language learning process. Students’ attitude towards their learning is regarded as an essential element which builds upon their motivation whereas according to Coffin et al. (2003), ‘the provision of feedback on students’ writing is a central pedagogic practice’ (Coffin et al. 2003: 102) [1]. However, this issue, like everything in the world, has two – side problem that it can improve language learning when it follows the positive trend and vice versa. In spite of the fact that teachers spent much time and effort on giving feedback, students’ writing could not improve and students keep their same mistakes. A great deal of teachers supposed that if the students attended teacher feedback thoroughly, their writing would be excellent. On the other hand, in students’ thinking, teacher feedback does not really help them to improve their writing because it hardly meet their desire to revise their writing performances. 
To find solutions for this mismatch, there have been many researches conducted to simultaneously study students’ attitude toward teacher feedback and teachers’ preference on giving feedback. Despite gaining positive results in improving language learning in many places, these studies were not successfully implemented in rural schools such as Bac Son high school in which conditions of English learning and language competence are so limited as compared to those in urban areas.
Because of these reasons and accompanying with my colleagues’ difficulties in giving effective feedback, I have decided to do this research named: ‘Investigate students’ attitude toward teacher feedback on their writing performances to help teachers provide effective feedback: a case study from Bac Son high school’. 
II. Aims of the research
Giving feedback to students is not a problem with a teacher of English. The issue I want to emphasize here is that teacher feedback should be effective and favored by the students. Be aware of my responsibility for requirements of the Department of Education and Training combining the reality of my students to English learning, I carried out my study with three main aims:
- To investigate attitudes of students in mountainous high school towards teacher feedback in their writing.
- Provide further insights, analysis and assessments about students’ preference towards teacher feedback.
- Providing some pedagogical suggestions for teachers to give feedback flexibly and effectively in English learning.
III. Subjective of the research
The total participants were 98 students from two eleventh grades and one twelfth grade in Bac Son high school which is situated in Ngoc Lac, a mountainous district in Thanh Hoa province. Out of the 98 participants, there are 36 male students (36.7%) and 62 female ones (63.3%) participating in the study. The state of unbalance of gender percentage is caused by some of reasons of which males at late teenager are regarded as main employees in their families, they therefore, abolish their schooling and earn living. More specially, the number of Muong students (91.8%) is overwhelming to the amount of Kinh students (8.2%). This disproportion is unsurprising as the fact that Bac Son school is situated in a mountainous area where a vast majority of the inhabitants are Muong ethnics. The majority of these students come from disadvantageous families with the under medium level of living standard and learning condition as well. Consequently, these students’ motivation of studying is remarkable limited due to the burden of subsistence. Unfortunately, their English proficiency is almost either at the beginning level or at A1 level although they have been learning English for more than four years, since they were sixth grade students.
IV. Methodology of the research	
Both qualitative and quantitative methods were employed in order to answer the research questions: 
1. What attitudes do high school students in the mountainous area have towards different types of writing feedback?
2. Do the types of feedback favoured by students help them improve performances?
Data were collected by means of survey questionnaires and interviews. Survey questionnaires were utilised to explore the attitudes of students towards teacher feedback in their writing. Interviews were conducted to obtain further insights regarding the topic, and also to compare with the survey data.
B. CONTENTS.
I. Theoretical basis of the study.
I.1. Definitions of teacher feedback
Teacher feedback in general refers to specific information that teachers support to their students related to the task or learning process. Martha N. Ovando, (1994) defines it as “the return to the input of a part of output system, or process”. It is also linked to a “response, especially to one in authority about an activity”[2]. More specifically, feedback is conceptualized from three standpoints: the teacher, the student, and the learning process (Bloom, B. S. 1976) [3]. For instance, feedback can “reveal errors in learning shortly after they occura self-correcting system so that errors made at one time can be corrected before they are compounded with later errors” (Bloom, 1976:8). Likewise, Carlson (1979) states that feedback in general is the amount of authoritative information that students get to strengthen or adjust responses to learning and guide them more proficiently in attaining the objectives of the course[4]. Schutz and Weinstein (1990) regard feedback as a process of “collecting information about students' performance, their familiarity with the type of assessment method, and their background knowledge” (p.1) [5]. In a more general view, they delineate feedback as “an important part of the teaching and learning process”. As indicated earlier on in the introduction, a number of authors on assessment and learning assert that feedback can have a positive effect on students‟ learning (for example, Salder, 1998; Black and William, 1998; Maclellen, 2001) [6]. Thus, feedback has been recognized as an instrument to improve teaching and learning. More recently, it has been perceived as a central component of enhancing students‟ performance and motivation as well as revising the applied teaching strategies (Yorke, 2003; Gibbs and Simpson, 2004; and Irons, 2008) [7]. For instance, Irons (2008) argues that feedback can have “a very positive motivating effect on students” (p.37), [7] and teachers should be aware of ensuring that positive statements are helpful. If students are provided with positive comments to promote them to engage in further study, they may become good learners and good achievers as well. 
I.2. Two side issue of attitude towards teacher feedback
I.2.1. Negative attitudes towards teacher feedback 
According to previous studies, teacher’s feedback is unintelligible to students because there seems to be a mismatch between teachers and students’ perception in the use of feedback. They affirm that teachers misunderstand students’ contents and leave some feedback unrelated to students’ performances. More specifically, in his research, Zamel’s (1985) demonstrates that students scarcely read teacher’s comments and corrections because teachers misunderstand students’ contents and give debated feedback to guide students with the subjective instructions [8]. Also, Zacharias’s (2007) denotes that teacher’s feedback is divergent from students’ original ideas while writing [9]. Students would be confused about how to revise because the teacher gives an irrelevant idea which is totally different from students’ mental gist of their performances. Likewise, students have difficulties in reading teacher’s feedback because they can not read teacher’s feedback with unreadable wording which is unclear for understanding. In Sommers’s (1982) study, it is proposed that sometime teachers’ feedback is not clear to provide the truly precise suggestions and responses in regard to what students’ contents, so that students can not enhance their writing skills. Additionally, Sommers reveal that some words or sentences revised by students are even worse than the original sentences because of teacher’s obscure written instructions [10]. Similarly, according to Zacharias’s (2007) study, it is also indicated that students have difficulties in reading teacher’s feedback which is intricate to the correction, so that students are not willing to accept the teacher’s feedback [9]. What is more, in Zamel’s (1985) research, students attribute that the teacher’s feedback is vague so as to mislead them to the wrong direction; meanwhile, students would doubt why they have to read the teacher’s feedback. Because of this doubt, students omit and even keep away from the teacher’s feedback (Sommers, 1982; Zamel, 1985). Overall, although students can read teacher’s feedback, they are confused by teacher’s feedback with complex language as well as vague expressions. 
I.2.2. Positive attitudes towards teacher feedback 
On the contrary, students consider teacher’s feedback as a useful instrument for them to improve their writing skills because it facilitates students to correct their errors. According to Wu’s (2003) study in which both qualitative and quantitative methods were used, it reveals that teacher’s feedback is useful and acceptable for students because of high quality and accuracy of teacher’s feedback [11]. First, the students were from three different classes in the third year of senior high school. One class was from Kauhsiung High School, and the other two classes were from Kauhsiung Municipal Chien Chen Senior High School. The total participants were 94 students including 60 male and 34 female students. Participants’ attitudes were investigated by two types of instruments, including students’ questionnaires and two sets of individual semi-structured interview. The major finding from the survey is that nearly 60% of the students considered to be able to correct the errors and read teacher’s comments when their performances were returned. In the same vein, the finding from Cohen and Cavalcanti’s (1990) research indicates that students are eager to accept teacher’s feedback because it is helpful for them to revise the errors [12]. 
In addition, students assert that they can increase their writing fluency due to they learn more vocabularies from teacher’s feedback. This can be illustrated by Chan’s (2004) survey, the result from students’ perceptions shows that teacher’s feedback on students’ writing improves their writing fluency. In his study, Chan aims to investigate the effect of dialogue journal writing on EFL junior high school students’ writing fluency. Students’ dialogue journal writing was utilized in the experimental group to investigate students’ attitudes towards the effects of teacher’s feedback on their writing. The research result reveals that teacher’s feedback on journal writing advances their writing ability, especially in writing fluency. The majority of students comment with their positive attitude toward the teacher feedback on dialogue journal writing [13]. 
Likewise, in Wang’s (2004) study, it also indicates that teacher’s feedback improves students’ writing fluency. He conducted an activity with 41 participants in one class from Neili Senior High School taking part in the dialogue journal writing activity for 14 weeks. The result shows that teacher’s feedback improves students’ writing because students can write more fluently and they do not feel anxious while writing journals. Overall, it is hypothesized that teacher’s feedback can facilitate students to correct mistakes, but students can not understand optimally what the teachers try to express because teachers usually write the professional feedback with complex language [14].
I.3. Benefits of feedback
According to many previous studies of the researchers such as Ferris, 1997; Wu, 2003 and Zamel, 1985, teacher’s feedback is considered to be ineffective because students often ignore it and many of them even do not care about it [15]. Nevertheless, many other researchers such as Chan, 2003; Chaudron, 1984 [16]; Wang, 2004; and Zacharias, 2007 indicate that teacher’s feedback is advantageous for students because it helps students know what and where they should correct. Indeed, in his opinion, Lee, 2007 defines teacher’s feedback as a useful device of pedagogy to improve the teaching and learning of writing skills [17]. Additionally, Chaudron, 1984 and Wu, 2003 agree with Lee about this point of view because they confirm that the teacher professional opinions or questions in students’ writing can help students acquire writing skills or correct errors effectively. In the same vein, Patthey-Chavez, Matsumura, and Valdés (2004) assert that teacher feedback, particularly a written feedback, plays an important role on students’ writing since they take for granted that writing is a process approach which focus on an issue that is known as a cycle of revisions [18]. Naturally, as results, more and more teachers pay attention to the effect of teacher feedback in students’ writing performance. Particularly, from the surveys of students’ perceptions, teachers would be capable to learn more about whether teacher’s feedback enhances students’ writing ability or not. 
II. Reality of the issue 
A questionnaire designed focusing on students’ attitudes toward different types of feedback in their writing performances was administered to 98 students. The questionnaires were composed of demographic information, multiple response items, closed items, such as yes / no, and Likert-type items which were classified as “strongly disagree, disagree, no idea, agree, strongly agree” or “very often, often, often, sometimes, rarely, never”. Students were asked to circle the number of the responses on the instrument that best described their feelings towards the statement at the moment. All questions were written in Vietnamese to guarantee students’ accurate understanding as well as their full confidence in their responses shown in Appendix A.
Apart from questionnaires, the data was also obtained through interviews. Twenty students were randomly chosen from who agreed to do an interview and wrote their names at the bottom of their questionnaire before to further participate in the interviews through purposive sampling. The purpose of the interviews was to explore in more detail students’ responses to the questionnaire. In order to make the interviewees comfortable and easily understandable, the language used in all the interviews is Vietnamese. The 20 interviews took place over a month. Each interview lasted approximately 5 minutes and was conducted at the break time between two periods of their lessons. During the interviews, the researcher took notes for better transcription. All the interviews were recorded for precision and easier transcription with the participants’ permissions.
II.1. Students’ experiences and attitudes toward teacher feedback
Table 1: Frequencies of students’ comprehension towards teacher feedback
Question 1: Is teacher feedback intelligible for you to react?
Number of responses
Percentage
Extremely/ absolutely difficult
10
10.2
Difficult 
66
67.35
No idea
12
12.25
Easy 
8
8.2
Extremely/ absolutely easy
2
2
Total 
98
100
As can be seen from Table 1, more than three quarters of research informants namely 76 students (representing 77.9 %) reported that they found teacher feedback difficult and absolutely difficult whereas 10.2 % of the respondents stated that teacher feedback is easy and absolutely easy. The rest of participants equivalent to 10 students had no idea about this issue.
From the above data analysis, we can find out that a vast majority of the students encountered difficulties in reacting to the feedback. More specifically, in the interviews, 20 students were asked “What difficulties do you have in understanding teacher feedback?”. Unsurprisingly, only one student (SI. 5) said that she rarely had difficulties in reacting to the teacher feedback; three of them did not care about teacher feedback and they did not know what the teacher had written in their writings whilst sixteen interviewees equivalent to 80% found troublesome in reacting teacher feedback. Below are some excerpts of their responses:
My teacher of English wrote into my writing that I had to add more information but she did not point out what the information should be. Therefore, when this mistake could not be corrected, it would develop new ones in later drafts (SI. 2, my translation).
I am not a good learner of English, so I don’t get any benefits from teacher feedback if the teacher gives general comments such as “many vocabulary errors”, “many grammatical errors” because I don’t know exactly what are my mistakes which should be corrected (SI. 1, SI. 11 and SI. 19, my translation). 
 I often encounter difficulties in understanding teacher feedback because too many unfamiliar words she comments in my writing (SI.7 and SI. 13, my translation). 
In conclusion, the results from both questionnaires and interviews show that most of the students felt unexcited when they received teacher feedback because of difficulties they experienced in comprehending it.
In the same vein, Nugrahenny T. Zacharias, (2006) stated five difficulties with teacher feedback that students have in understanding it. These problems were summarized from the open-ended items in the questionnaire and the interview namely “the coding”, “general feedback”, “te