Research Proposal

Effects on Feedback among ESL Students

Students taking English as their second language face different challenges in their quest to acquire knowledge in a language that's not their first language. The feedback given by their teacher is some of the major challenges that these students face which is worse cases have seen some of these students give up learning the language. Feedback is an important part is ESL writing process since writing is probably the most difficult task that English language learners may face. According to Munice (2000), feedback is vital in helping learners to improve their writing skill and whatever forms it takes, it can have a positive effect on the learners. Both teachers and students agree that written feedback is a crucial part of the writing process (Cohen & Cavalcanti, 1990). Feedback can be defined as writing extensive comments on students’ texts to provide a reader response to students’ efforts and at the same time helping them improve and learn as writers (Hyland, 2003). Teachers provide feedbacks to make sure students to review and understand the problems they had and to improve their future writing. As teachers want to give feedbacks that can encourage and challenge their students to be better writers, but they probably can’t always know how the feedback they provided are truly be received by their students, or how effective their feedback is. A lot of researches showed that interactive and corrective feedback facilitates students’ development in second language skills. The feedbacks might in some cases be more harmful than the normal correctional errors that can be corrected by the teachers and these students handled in a manner that would encourage them to acquire the basic knowledge that they seek. Therefore, this paper aims to examine effects on different feedbacks appears among ESL students. Comment by Kung-Wan Choong: Citation? Also, may want to hedge a little in academic discourse – like “may result in students giving up” Comment by Kung-Wan Choong: As we’ll discuss in class, we think of feedback in SLA as related to noticing – making students aware of shortcomings

The debate on the most appropriate ways that teachers and students studying English as their second language should relate has been on for a while. The impacts on the feedbacks have varied from students to students with some having positive impacts on the same feedbacks given by the tutors while some having negative impacts on feedbacks (Ali Grami, 2010). Therefore, this is an area of concern for most of the scholars seeking as they seek to understand English as a language and acquire the knowledge that they seek. Feedbacks from teachers have often been proved by these scholars to have positive impacts on these students compared to the feedbacks given by their fellow peers. This is because of the various mentalities and perceptions that these students might have acquired with time. In this regard, written feedbacks have often been an area of concern for these learners as the feedback might have either negative or positive feedback. Comment by Kung-Wan Choong: There are a lot of different topics here: peer vs. instructor feedback, student perception of feedback, and effect of feedback on language acquisition. I would choose one narrower focus. For example, it sees you are most interested in written corrective feedback. From there, you can go on to examine the different ways that can be done, drawing from the work of Bitchner and Koch, Sheen, Ferris, etc.

Analysis of the Situation

There have been numerous studies done on the impacts of feedbacks to the students with special emphasis being done to the foreign students that learn English as their second language. As a result, there is good documentation on this matter and the following are some of the documented sources about impacts of feedbacks to the students.

For instance, the study by Truscott in the case against the grammar there are various issues of concern that are highlighted in which students have to take note to ensure that their ways of impacting the knowledge are perfectly done. Learners taking English as their second language have often found it challenging to adapt to the challenges and due to the differences in culture settings, the influence of the first language and the overall most probably new environment they find it difficult to adjust quickly thus making it important that their tutors understand them for effective management of these grammatical issues. Comment by Kung-Wan Choong: Need a citation

Truscott in his case argued that the corrective feedback regarding the use of the language by these students in written form was ineffective and harmful to the learning progress of these scholars. However, this is not the case when some of the students have often depended on the use of the feedback given by the tutors to improve themselves in learning the language. This study by Truscott has been refuted by various scholars who argued that effective feedback given by the tutor to the student on the use of adjectives and articles was most likely to make these students better in the study of this language. However, instances when the tutors were inhumane and not understanding that these were students taking English as their second language then they would easily be making a huge mistake that would make these students not be interested in learning from their mistakes and errors and become better with time. Comment by Kung-Wan Choong: I would argue that it has not been refute and is still a question (see Ekiert and diGennaro) Comment by Kung-Wan Choong: Need evidence or citation.

Besides that, researchers were also motivated by the fact that there must be meaningful impacts that motivated tutors to provide written corrective feedback to their students. Teachers who spend most of their time with the students understand the impacts of written corrective work to the students. This is because the students use these corrected feedbacks to gauge themselves and plan on the most appropriate ways that would result in achieving their set goals. In this regard, it's understood that the use of corrective feedback between students and teachers acts as a link between the theory and the practice that's expected to make this student perfect in their quest to get this knowledge. Therefore, this is an important tool that should not be ignored. Comment by Kung-Wan Choong: Try to put this in SLA terms, such as input, noticing, etc – again we’ll talk about it more in class, though it’s also in the sources you read.

The study by Newcastle University on the impacts of corrective feedback also provides some insights into the role that corrective feedbacks plays in the learning progress of these students (Leng, 2014). The study which was done by comparing the impacts of the feedbacks given by students and peers indicates that these students are always paying more emphasis on the corrective measures and guidelines given by the teachers more than the peers. This is because they feel secure with the teachers` comments because they feel that the teachers have a better mastery of the content and through adhering to these corrective feedbacks given they eventually improve in their mastery in the language. Comment by Kung-Wan Choong: Another topic – peer vs. instructor feedback – how does this relate to the other studies?

However, the students were apprehensive of their fellow peers because they felt that these students were less comprehensive in analyzing the mistakes compared to their teachers. This made them focus on the measures that teachers have provided more than their fellow peers. However, the correctional feedbacks from fellow students also act as a source of inspiration for these students as they feel that their fellow students can also work to meet the expected goals as their fellow students.

The article was written by Ann Johnson also provides an incentive in the way the use of written corrective feedbacks has a relationship between teachers and these ESL students. In this study, John analyzed the perceptions of both teachers and students on the issuance of corrective written feedback. The study thus showed that both teachers and students showed no perceptions of the exact feedback that was presented to them to do corrections. The students remained focused on making the necessary corrections as required (Johnson, 2009). Besides that, both the students and the teachers took the burden of making the corrective measures as their own to ensure that they gain from the study as much as possible. However, one thing that came out clear during this study is that teachers need to understand the perception of their feedbacks by the students. This is because when the perception is not positive then these corrective feedbacks might only be considered in fear of being punished but not to acquire the right knowledge required. Comment by Kung-Wan Choong: Cite papers, not people, so Johnson (2009) Comment by Kung-Wan Choong: This study is on perception of feedback. If that is what you want your paper to be about, that is OK. Again, you eventually need to link it to SLA concepts.

Finally, the analysis of the written corrective feedback by Kelly, 2013 was based on the impact that giving of corrective feedback has to the students. The study provided an effective way in which undergraduate students benefit from the use of the written feedback given by the teachers. For instance, the study showed that the use of these feedbacks makes it effective and easier for the students to make corrections for the errors and mistakes that they might have committed. Besides that, they also use these corrective feedbacks as guidelines in their personal revisions and studies which eventually lead to significant improvements in their quest to understand and use English as ESL students. Comment by Kung-Wan Choong: What SLA processes are involved? Error analysis by teachers, students? Noticing of the gap?

Conclusion

Learning of English as ESL student is always bound to face various challenges not only with settling at a new environment with new friends but also the feedbacks that are given back by the teachers. These feedbacks play huge role towards learning of this language. Therefore, it’s important that important measures are put in place to ensure that the students have the right perceptions on these feedbacks for effective impact on the students to be realized. Comment by Kung-Wan Choong: Narrow the topic a bit. Even if you assume that WCF is helpful, as most do, what should it look like? Focused or unfocussed, simple or complex, implicit or explicit? See work done by Rod Ellis, Sheen, Bitchner and Koch, etc. If you are more interested in how students perceive feedback, what are the best practices, and why (in SLA terms?

References

Ali Grami, G. M. (2010). The Effects of Integrating Peer Feedback into University-Level ESL Writing Curriculum: A Comparative Study in a Saudi Context. Comment by Kung-Wan Choong: Which journal is this from? The citation is incomplete.

Johnson, A. (2009). Teacher and student perceptions of second language writing feedback:A survey of six college ESL classes and their teachers.

Leng, K. T. (2014). An analysis of written feedback on ESL students’ writing. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 123, 389-397. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.01.1437

Truscott. (1996). Focused Written Corrective Feedback:What a Replication Study Reveals About Linguistic Target Mastery. The University of New York.