Weekly Reflection (W12) by Myong Hee
On Tuesday (L2 writing & Error correction)
Covered Hyland (1998), Hyland (2003), Hyland & Hyland (2006)
Use of feedback
Individual difference in the amount of feedback used and preferences
• Maho – Received more overall feedback but fewer usable ones
Did not incorporate teacher’s feedback much (22%)
Preferred feedback on her ideas (less priority for grammatical accuracy)
• Samorn – Used teacher’s feedback more (82%)
More concerned about grammar & interested in improving this aspect
However, lost her confidence in grammatical competence at the end of course
Dealing with plagiarism
• When citing in writing, students may have different assumptions and practices due to their cultural backgrounds
• Teachers may react differently due to individual and cultural differences.
• When providing feedback regarding plagiarism, which is better: direct vs. mitigated
• A teacher should have been more direct, explicit in dealing with Maho’s unacceptable behavior since she may not be aware of its consequences (Kevin)
Issue of mitigation
• When to be ‘mitigated’ and when to be ‘direct’?
• Teachers need to clarify confusion about feedback (Yukiko)
• Teachers’ indirect feedback seems confusing & not effective based on her own experience as a L2 writer (Yun Deok)
• Sangki – degree of mitigation may be varied depending on types of errors
Lourdes’comments: Terms ‘treatable’ & ‘nontreatable’ by Ferris (1999) are not grounded.
Issue of revision
As a teacher
• For providing good feedback, teachers may take time; the may have better ideas once they knows about their students. Likewise, training may help for effective peer feedback
• When providing feedback, it involves 2 things: (a) how do I do it (b) knowing what student’s intent was
As a student
• Form-focused feedback may not bring in global level revision (Luciana)
• Revision is high level skills: it may involves beyond feedback & not directly related to feedback
• A good writer takes feedback as prompts to generate better ideas to revise the whole text
Lourdes’ comments: We may need future studies on students’ revisions skills or training to revise
Questions to think about
1. Observations in which you recognize yourself as a writing teacher
2. Observations in which you recognize yourself as a writer
1 comment:
Myong Hee: Thanks for the good summary of the key points we discussed on Tuesday, I would add a keyword that is used very little by error correction researchers but that the Hylands have been able to substantiate with their empirical work: "Relational" dimensions of EC. They are very right in asking the field to begin incorporating the relational dimension in their study designs.
I am convinced the inability to demonstrate conclusively that error correction happens (in writing and in speaking) is in part due to three factors we have mentioned throughout the semester: (1) the failure to incorporate the relational in the investigations; (2) the lack of fine-grained analysis of "errors" and "needed corrections" from a developmental perspective so we know what can be "treated" and how; (3) and the neglect of student variables, including both cognitive variables related to the responses we are asking them to have (e.g., learner developmental readiness, revising/writing maturity) and cognitive and affective sources of individual differences (e.g., working memory, orientation to accuracy or communication, motivation).
Maybe it is impossible to account for these three neglected areas in our error correction studies... Is it just too difficult??
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