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CHAPTER SIX CONCLUSIONS
The chapter presents three sections in regard to main findings, the pedagogical implications of the study; and at last, the limitation of the present study and
suggestions for further research will be discussed.
Main Findings
The present experiment led to four main findings and the findings were listed as below.
1. The IDF group significantly improved after the 14-week experiment on the post- EWPT and the comparison of the retention and the post-EWPTs showed that the retention effect of IDF was satisfactory.
2. The DF group had no significant progress after the 14-week treatment on the post- EWPT while the comparison of the retention and the post-EWPTs showed that the retention effect of DF was satisfactory.
3. No significant difference was found in the comparison of post-EWPTs of the two groups and that of the retention EWPTs.
4. The DF group showed more positive attitude toward English learning and the teacher feedback with significant difference while the IDF group showed significantly more anxiety toward correcting the errors on workbooks. Moreover, the DF group expressed significantly more confidence in understanding the teacher’s markings, written feedback, and correction style; participants also considered DF as beneficial to self-detecting ability.
Pedagogical Implications
The following pedagogical implication can be made from the implementation of two different kinds of teacher feedback. Two implications are based on the findings of
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the research that can be provided to EFL teachers and researchers who want to do related studies.
One pedagogical implication was that primary school teachers could try to offer IDF on students’ workbooks. The implication was attributed to two following reasons.
First, based on the findings in the present study, the IDF group gained significant improvement from the pre- to the post-EWPT; the result supported the positive effect of IDF. Second, from the comparison of the retention to the post-EWPT, no significant difference between two scores was found, that is to say, the IDF group maintained what they learn from the treatment well over three weeks. In addition, what is worth noticing was the significant improvement on the preposition errors; the score had a great progress over three weeks. This influential progress implied that IDF could help students learn better from the teacher’s reviewed activity and maintain the learning result over three weeks. Though the reviewed activity did not relate to the treatment, participants in the IDF group still had better performance than the DF group. The result from the retention EWPT implied a positive influence from IDF.
The other implication that could be made was how to utilize the IDF in the primary school contexts. At first, according to the replies of ELAQ, the IDF group expressed significant anxiety while correcting workbooks with IDF; this might relate to their unfamiliarity with a new format of teacher feedback. Teachers can conduct IDF by giving more explanation and practice to help students get accustomed to it. Secondly, since IDF was significantly beneficial on three aspects, e.g. plural/singular noun, verb tense and spelling; it is worth to try to focus on these three targeted error types and to conduct the IDF in other primary teaching contexts, such as grade five or younger grades. Based on the current experiment, IDF could work effectively with grade six participants on these three aspects, if these three aspects of IDF were applied to
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younger grades, the possible effective range of IDF might be detected, for example, if the result showed that these three aspects work well in grade four but not in grade three. The effective range of IDF would be detected; teachers would know that applying IDF might be beneficial to grade six, five and four students, if the learners were under grade four, then, it would not be beneficial to apply IDF.
To conclude, as presented in this study, IDF may offer the primary school teachers new perspectives on providing corrective feedback which focuses more on the learning awareness, actively involvement in correction and the systematic feedback framework. Primary school teachers and researchers who want to do the related studies may try to conduct IDF for helping students with more progress on the sentence writing accuracy. In addition, the current study implied that IDF might be utilized to learners with more explanations to ease their anxiety; it might also be conducted with younger learners to see if the range of the effective IDF was existed.
Limitation and Suggestions
The study aimed at investigating the effects of teachers’ indirect feedback (IDF) and direct feedback (DF) on elementary school students’ sentence writing. The study also explored their attitudes toward the implementation of IDF and DF on English learning. Four aspects were limited in this current study and suggestions were proposed as below.
At first, the present study did not employ the pre-questionnaire to exam the change of student attitudes. The current study conducted the ELAQ after the
implementation of the treatment. Since the researcher assumed that students were not able to reply the ELAQ before receiving the different teacher feedbacks, the purpose of the ELAQ was to know about students attitudes towards the treatment. A
questionnaire before the treatment was suggested for the future study so as to
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investigate the change of student attitudes after receiving the treatment.
Secondly, this research was merely conducted with 66 participants in an
elementary school located in the northern Taiwan, and accordingly, the findings cannot be generalized to all the elementary school students. The participants of the present research were from one primary school in the northern Taiwan. It was suggested that future studies can take regional variables into consideration by enlarging the sample size, including subjects from different areas of Taiwan.
Thirdly, there were only three units constrained to the text book utilized in the current study. Future studies may investigate on a wider teaching content. This study offered a limited result since the teaching content focused on the present and the present continuous tenses only. In authentic English writing, various tenses such as the past or the future tenses should be utilized. Also, in English text books, various
language focuses, such as, articles, adverbs and conjunctions were included. However, the current study was limited by the duration of the experiment, so the teaching
content was limited to the three units. A wider teaching content that includes more language focuses was suggested to be included in future studies.
Finally, the current research only focused on learners’ sentence writing accuracy.
It was suggested that the future research could investigate the effect of the complexity of writing by counting the frequency with the subordinate clauses. Since Sheppard (1992) noted that a teacher’s correction on grammatical errors might have the harmful effect on the writing complexity. The future study was suggested to detect if students shorten their sentences or make their composition simpler after receiving teachers’
correction. Moreover, Truscott (2001) also proposed that the teacher correction might lead to the negative attitudes toward English learning, thus, the questionnaire was also suggested to probe into the learning attitude and to know if students choose to avoid
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the subordinated clauses when they were not sure about the usage. The investigation on the complexity and learning attitude would provide more information to the EFL teachers for considering how to utilize the different teacher feedbacks.
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Appendix A. English Writing Proficiency Test (EWPT)
班級:六年____班 中文名:_________ 座號:____
Part (1) Read and circle the correct word.灰字二選一，圈出適合句意的字。
例題: How are/is you?
3. We are playing card/cards.
4. Jenny is drinking juices/juice.
5. He is going to/in the bank.
6. They are at/to the zoo.
7. Harry is paint/painting the wall.
8. They are watching/watch a movie.
9. We are at the beach/baech. (海灘) 10. He is in a restuarant/restaurant.
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_____ 4. He is eating dumpling.
_____ 5. I am going the bookstore.
_____ 6. He goes the bank.
Part (4) Short Questions 按照圖片回答問題，請用完整句。
Part (4) Short Questions 按照圖片回答問題，請用完整句。