Effects of Teacher-Student Conference on Paragraph Writing of EFL Students in Thailand

Abstract

Teacher-student conference is one feedback technique to enhance students' writing. This study aims to investigate the effects of teacher-student conference on paragraph writing of EFL learners and explore students' opinions towards teacher-student conference as a feedback technique. The sample involved 23 Thai English major students taking a paragraph writing course. The research instruments consisted of pretest/posttest, writing tasks, writing rubric, the report on teacher-student conferencing, and a semi-structured interview. T-test, min, max, mean, standard deviation, and content analysis were used for data analysis. The results showed that students significantly improved their paragraph writing after teacher-student conferencing at .05 level. Students got the highest mean score in a process paragraph but the lowest mean score in a narrative paragraph. Topic sentence was the highest aspect that students improved their writing in, while verb tense was the least. Students' opinions were found in five areas: 1) discuss strengths and weaknesses, 2) build relationships between students and teacher, 3) develop ideas on assignments, 4) plan for revision, and 5) clarify grades. The results showed that students thought the main advantage of the teacher-student conference was developing ideas, whereas clarifying grades was the least advantageous. Further studies should work on strategies to improve each type of writing so that teachers can apply each writing strategy in response to the different learning needs of students.