The Effect of Teacher Feedback on the Simple Past Tense Acquisition in Senior High School Students' English Writing

Abstract

Teacher feedback is an essential part which can not be overlooked in English writing teaching. Whether teacherfeedback is effective and which type of feedback is more effective in improving learners’ writing proficiency haveattracted more and more researchers’ attention. Direct feedback is the feedback that teachers correct students’ errorsdirectly under the form or the right using habit of target language. Indirect feedback is the feedback that teachersonly mark out or point out students’ errors but not correct errors. This study explores the effects of two differentkinds of feedback (direct feedback and indirect feedback) on the acquisition of English simple past tense in highschool students’ writing. And it attempts to answer the following three questions: 1) Do teachers’ direct and indirectfeedback in English writing influence senior high school students’ acquisition of simple past tense? 2) If so, whichkind of feedback (direct or indirect feedback) has the greater influence on improving students’ acquisition of simplepast tense in English writing? 3) What perceptions do students have towards teachers’ direct and indirect feedback inEnglish writing?The result showed that the two kinds of feedback have an influence on the acquisition of the target structure,however, there is no significant difference between direct and indirect feedback group, which states that indirectfeedback class was not better than direct feedback class.