The impact
of teacher’s corrective feedback on learners' writing accuracy of simple past tense
Zheng Lili (郑力力), Shenzhen Nanshan Experimental School,
Guangdong
The major
objective of this study is to explore the impact of a teacher's corrective
feedback on learners’ writing accuracy of simple past tense, summarize the
types of corrective feedback and discuss the learners’ views towards a teacher's
corrective feedback. Ten Junior Two students of mid-intermediate English
proficiency level in Shenzhen Nanshan Experimental School participated in the
study, which lasted for 13 weeks. The students were split into two groups:
experimental group and control group.
Based on a
mixture of both qualitative and quantitative analysis of the data collected,
the major findings of the thesis are 1) a teacher's corrective feedback (CF) can
improve students' writing accuracy of simple past tense; 2) the teacher mainly
gave Direct CF, Indirect CF and Focused CF; 3) students held positive attitudes
towards the teacher's corrective feedback and they believed that the teacher's
corrective feedback could help them improve their writing accuracy of simple
past tense.
Enhancing
EFL learners’ sociolinguistic competence
Zhang Ying (张莹), University of Southern California, US
This study
focused on cultivating sociolinguistic awareness and developing sociolinguistic
competence for EFL students at university in China to conduct successful and
effective communication in reality. Specifically, the current study examined
the influence of the effectiveness of a pedagogical intervention on EFL
learners' sociolinguistic competence. A pre-/post-test design was adopted. A
total of 56 EFL students from a large university in China participated in this
study. The treatment group received instruction regarding sociolinguistic
competence, whereas the control group did not have the pedagogical
intervention. The intervention encompassed 10 sociolinguistic lessons. Examples
of the topics included intercultural awareness, racism, identity construction,
and speech acts. Additionally, qualitative data were collected through
semi-structured interviews and the researcher's observation. This research
provided evidence that: 1) exploring the sociolinguistic domain piqued Chinese
EFL learners' interest and helped students realize the necessity and magnitude
of learning sociolinguistic competence; 2) teaching sociolinguistic competence
to students helped them heighten their sociolinguistic awareness and produce
more appropriate utterances in the target language; 3) EFL instructors in China
became more confident in teaching sociolinguistic competence by implementing
the lesson-planning model.
Zhang Ying obtained her master's degree in TESOL at
the University of Southern California, US. She has been teaching English at the
university and high school levels for 12 years in China, the United States,
South Korea and Thailand. Her research interests entail second language pedagogy,
acquisition, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, and teacher education.
