Efl students’ Perceptions of Teacher Feedback and Intra-Feedback in Writing Essays
Yüklə 119,09 Kb.
|
- Bu səhifədəki naviqasiya:
- 3.3. Procedures
- Table 1. Students’ perceptions about reading and commenting on their classmates compositions
- Item 4
- Table 2. Students’ perceptions of discussing their comments on their classmates compositions with a partner
- Item 9
- Table 3. Students’ views about reading peer comments on their composition
- Table 4. Students’ perceptions about reading teachers comments
- Item 16
- Table 5. Mean rank of the four constructs
- Construct 3
- Table 6. Chi-Square Test on the students’ responses to construct 3 and 4
- Table 7 Selected Interview Excerpts of Q1 Student
- Table 8. Selected Interview Excerpts of Q2 Student
- Table 9. Selected interview excerpts of Q3 Student
| Participants
The present study involved a common sampling technique, namely, convenient sampling (Dorniye, 2003), allowing the researchers for data collection from an intact class. The participants were 21 year-four university students within the age range of 20-22. They were studying English literature at a state university in Mazandaran province, Iran. All of them were native speakers of Persian and had no experience of living in a foreign country. In the first meeting, the participants were provided with detailed information about the stages and procedure of the study. All participants expressed their satisfaction to participate in the study in the consent forms. In order to provide teacher feedback, an EFL teacher, holding MA in TEFL, participated in this study. He had five years of teaching experience at different institutes from beginner to advanced levels and was quite familiar with the practice of feedback provision. 3.2. Instruments The study involved a mixed method design. More precisely, the quantitative data were obtained from the questionnaire employed to explore the participants’ reactions to the comments they received from their peers and teacher and also their perceptions of the extent to which the teacher and peer’s comments improved the quality of their essays. In addition, qualitative data were obtained using semi-structured interviews focused on questions related to teacher comments and peer comments. The diversity of the collected data could ensure triangulation which entails “inspection of different kinds of data, different methods, and a variety of research tools” in a single investigation (van Lier, 1988, cited in McGroarty & Zhu, 1997, p. 3). 3.2.1. Questionnaire A questionnaire adapted from Lee (2015) was administered to the participants. The final questionnaire, after being piloted and revised contained four constructs representing different stages of peer- and teacher feedback. The different stages of peer feedback included reading and commenting on peers’ essays (construct 1), discussing one’s own comments on peers’ essays with a partner (construct 2) and reading peer comments on one’s own essay (construct 3). The last construct (4) was about reading teacher’s comment. Each item consisted of a 5-point scale with responses ranging from ‘strongly agree’ to ‘strongly disagree’. 3.2.2. Semi-structured interview In order to illustrate the findings, quantitative data were integrated with the qualitative data obtained from open-ended questions of semi-structured interviews with the participants. The rationale behind the open-ended questions was to generate qualitative data to support the quantitative data. Dörnyei and Taguchi (2010) point out that the inclusion of open-ended questions results in greater richness of the responses and help to identify previously unanticipated issues. The interview questions adapted from Tsui and Ng (2000, p.157) asked about their preferences toward feedback provider (teacher/peer), feedback focus, feedback provision (usefulness of giving comments) and intra-feedback inclusion (usefulness of intra-feedback implementation in their class). 3.3. Procedures The class met weekly for 40 minutes for the duration of 4 weeks. The students wrote essays on three topics in three different writing cycles. For each cycle, one topic was selected. They wrote argumentative essays on topics selected from IELTS preparation textbooks. The topics chosen from these books were first piloted with a similar sample and proved to be appropriate for the level of participants of this study. Participants were randomly assigned into seven triads. In each cycle, one of the students was the writer and the other two were reviewers. In the first three weeks, the same process of writing and reviewing was followed. In the first session, the student writers wrote about a specific topic in 40 minutes. After the first session, one of the researchers made two copies of the written drafts to be used by peers and teacher. In the second session, firstly the two peer reviewers of each triad wrote separate comments on the written drafts within their group. Next, they discussed their comments to reach a joint comment in an intra-feedback process. Finally, the joint comment of the reviewers and the teacher’s comment were given to the writers in order to write two separate revisions. This process lasted for three weeks so that all the three members of each triad experienced being both writers and reviewers. In week four, the data from questionnaire and interview were collected.
The purpose of the current study was to investigate the participants’ perceptions of peer and teacher feedback. Firstly, the findings of the questionnaires related to different stages of peer feedback, are presented in the form of descriptive statistics (Tables 1-4). Secondly, the findings of the interview are reported. Research question one addressed: “How do Iranian EFL students assess different stages of intra-feedback and teacher feedback in terms of their usefulness for their writing improvement?”. Table 1 summarizes the ranking of the means of students’ responses to different items of the first construct of the questionnaire, which considers the participants’ perspective as reviewers of their peers’ essays.
As the table shows, the students enjoyed the experience of commenting on their peers’ written drafts. The comments were favorably viewed as the means of items related to construct one (about reading and commenting on my classmates' compositions) for students ranged from 4.19 to 3.85. Item 3 (whether reading and commenting on their classmates' compositions helped them improve the organization of my own composition) took up the lowest position and item 1 (whether reading and commenting on classmates' compositions was useful or not) took up the top position in the table. As the table shows, the students were positive about reading and commenting on their classmate’s compositions (total mean= 4.03) and found the act of commenting useful for improvement of language, content and organization, respectively. Table 2 summarizes the ranking of the means of students’ responses to different items of the second construct of the questionnaire, focusing on the intra-feedback technique. Table 2. Students’ perceptions of discussing their comments on their classmates' compositions with a partner
The table shows that the students enjoyed discussing their comments on their classmates’ compositions with a partner. The comments were favorably viewed as the means of items related to construct two (about reading and commenting on my classmates' compositions) for students ranged from 4.19 to 3.85. Item 7 (whether discussing comments on their classmates' compositions with a partner helped them improve the content of their own composition) took up the lowest position and item 10 (whether they benefited from discussing their comments on my classmates' compositions with a partner was useful or not) took up the top position in the table. As the table shows, the students were positive about intra-feedback technique (total mean= 4.09), and found the act of discussing their comments with another peer reviewer useful for improvement of organization, language and content, respectively. Table 3 summarizes the ranking of the means of students’ responses to different items of the third construct of the questionnaire, which was about reading peer comments on their composition. Table 3. Students’ views about reading peer comments on their composition
Table 3 indicates that the students appreciated reading peer comments on their composition. The comments were favorably viewed as the means of items related to this construct ranged from 4.28 to 3.90. Item 11 took up the lowest position and item 12 secured the top position in the table. As the table shows, the students found classmates' written comments useful (total mean= 4.10), as they perceived the act of reading peer comments useful for improvement of language, organization and content, respectively. Table 4 shows the ranking of the means of students’ responses to different items of the fourth construct of the questionnaire, which focused on reading the teacher's comments. Table 4. Students’ perceptions about reading teacher's comments
According to Table 4, the students liked reading the teacher's comments. The comments were favorably viewed as the means of items ranged from 4.42 to 4.00. Item 16 (whether reading the teacher's comments was useful or not) took up the lowest position and item 19 (whether teacher's comments improved the language (including grammar and vocabulary) of their composition or not) took up the top position in the table. Generally, the students found reading teacher's comments useful (total mean= 4.22). The students found the act of reading teacher's comments useful for improvement of content, organization and language, respectively. Table 5 presents the ranking of the average of the means of students’ responses to the four constructs of the questionnaire. The result of this comparison indicates that construct 4 achieved the highest mean rank among the four constructs, suggesting that the respondents found reading teacher’s comments on their composition more favorable than other forms of feedback. Table 5. Mean rank of the four constructs
Since construct 3 (Reading peer comments on my composition) and construct 4 (Reading teacher's comments) represents students perceptions towards teacher and peer feedback, all students responses on the 5- point scale on these two constructs were compared using a chi square test. As it is demonstrated on Table 6, the difference between these two constructs is highly significant (p=.000), suggesting that the students significantly perceived the teacher’s comments more useful than the comments they received from their peers. Table 6. Chi-Square Test on the students’ responses to construct 3 and 4 
The second research question asked the following question: “What are Iranian EFL students’ perceptions of feedback provider, feedback focus, feedback provision and intra-feedback inclusion in EFL writing class?”. All the students took part in the interview on the last session. The students’ responses are described and examined one by one in the following tables. They are categorized according to the main theme of the students’ answers (to keep the anonymity, the names of the interviewees are fake names below). Table 7 summarizes the excerpts of the students’ responses to Q1 (“What types of peer comments do you prefer?”). Table 7 Selected Interview Excerpts of Q1
Responses to Q1 can be summarized as follows: a) the majority of students (9 students; 42.8%) welcomed comment on organization; (b) five students (23.8%) valued both content and organization comments; (c) four students (19.0%) valued those peer comments which were about only language and mechanics and (d) three students (14.2%) preferred to receive critical comments. Table 8 summarizes the excerpts of the students’ responses to Q2 (“would you like it if there were only peer comments but not teacher comments? Why?”). Table 8. Selected Interview Excerpts of Q2
With respect to Q2 students’ answers are as follows: (a) eleven interviewees (52.3%) out of twenty-one, considered both peer and teacher feedback useful; (b) eight interviewees (38.0%) out of twenty-one, investigated only peer feedback to be useful and (c) two interviewees (9.5%) out of twenty-one considered only teacher feedback useful. Table 9 summarizes the excerpts of the students’ responses to Q3 (“Did you benefit from giving comments to others? If so, what were the benefits? If not, why not?”). Table 9. Selected interview excerpts of Q3
Regarding Q3, (a) generally nineteen interviewees (90.4%) claimed that giving feedback was useful and (b) only two of the interviewees (9.5%) found giving feedback useless. Therefore, the majority of participants preferred to give feedback. Table 10 summarizes the excerpts of the students’ responses to Q4 (“Did you benefit from intra-feedback practice in your writing class? If so, what were the benefits? If not, why not?”). Yüklə 119,09 Kb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
|