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ISSN 1798-4769 Journal of Language Teaching and Research, Vol. 2, No. 5, pp. 1136-1145, September 2011 © 2011 ACADEMY PUBLISHER Manufactured in Finland. doi:10.4304/jltr.2.5.1136-1145 © 2011 ACADEMY PUBLISHER Feedback in ESL Writing: Toward an Interactional Approach Hamdollah Ravand (Corresponding author) Faculty of Foreign Languages, University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran Email:H3ravand@yhoo.com Abbas Eslami Rasekh Faculty of Foreign Languages, University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran Email: Abbaseslamirasekh@yahoo.com Abstract—The role of feedback on writing involves complex issues and needs to be considered within the total context in which the feedback is given. The reason studies examining feedback effects are so inconsistent may be a function of the fact that these studies consider feedback issue from a single perspective. To deal with this problem, feedback is first defined from different perspectives, then different aspects of feedback are discussed and after that a discussion of the factors that affect the influence of feedback on second language writing follows and finally a model where all the factors interact to influence feedback practices in second langue writing is presented. Index Terms—feedback, second language writing, feedback variables, learner variables, instructional variables I. FEEDBACK: DEFINITIONS Before reviewing the research in this area, it is necessary to define two terms: errors and feedback. Our understanding of the word error itself can explain much of the disagreement that is to be found regarding its treatment. From a behaviorist viewpoint, errors were seen as bad habits which needed to be overcome through learning. For contrastive analysis, the counter part of bad habits was negative transfer. When elements from the student‘s L1 differed greatly with structures in the L2, the possibility of interference was seen as great (Larsen –Freeman & Long, 1991) With the Chomskyian inspired view of acquisition as rule driven, errors came to be seen as indicators of elements not yet fully acquired or plain lapses in performance. Put simply, errors presented a failure in linguistic competence (Svartvik, 1973). For the L2 student, errors most often represented an inadequate knowledge of rules. With the study of interlanguage, errors came to be interpreted as dialectal and not erroneous. In this continuum moving from the L1 to the target language, a student‘s evolving interlanguage seemed to follow a built –in syllabus that, in the absence of fossilization, would lead to something resembling the L2 without intervention (Corder 1978). In the seventies, Burt & Kiparsky (1974) distinguished global errors from local errors. Global errors were those that showed up frequently in student production whereas local errors were one time occurrences. With more communicative views of language acquisition, errors were recognized as listener defined (Esmondson, 1993). Only those elements that caused confusion on the part of the listener warranted correction. The treatment of errors or the teacher response to errors is more commonly referred to now as feedback. Feedback is the general heading for various techniques that are currently used in many L2 courses to respond to student writing. Feedback is defined as any procedure used to inform a learner whether an instructional response is right or wrong (Lalande, 1982). Overall, three broad meanings of feedback have been examined (Kulhavy and Wager, 1993). First, in a motivational meaning, some feedback, such as praise, could be considered a motivator that increases a general behavior (e.g., writing or revision activities overall). This piece of the definition came from the research that tried to influence the amount of exerted effort through motivation (Brown 1932; Symonds and Chase, 1929). Second, in a reinforcement meaning, feedback may specifically reward or punish very particular prior behaviors (e.g., a particular spelling error or particular approach to a concluding paragraph). This piece of the definition came from the Law of Effect (Thorndike, 1927). Third, in an informational meaning, feedback might consist of information used by a learner to change performance in a particular direction (rather than just towards or away from a prior behavior). This piece of the definition came from information-processing theories (Pressey, 1926, 1927). In the context of writing, all three elements may be important, although the informational element is particularly important. II. HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE The importance of feedback emerged with the development of learner-centered approaches to writing instruction in North American L1 composition classes during the 1970s. The process approach gave greater attention to teacher –
JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE TEACHING AND RESEARCH student encounters around texts and encouraged teachers to support writers through multiple drafts by providing feedback and suggesting revisions during the process of writing itself, rather than at the end of it. The form feedback took was extended beyond the teacher‘s marginal notes to include oral interaction involving the teacher or the students themselves. The focus moved from a concern with mechanical accuracy and control of language to a greater emphasis on the development and discovery of meaning through the experience of writing and rewriting. Feedback practices and issues were also increasingly influenced by interactionist theories, which emphasized the significance of the individual reader rather than the dialogic nature of writing. Rather than asking students to write for an idealized general audience, the interpretation and response of a specific reader was seen as important in giving meaning to text and assisting writers to shape their texts for real people. This perspective places a high value on reader response and encourages the use of peer feedback and multiple feedback sources to provide a real rather than a visualized audience. More recently, feedback has been seen as a key element of students‘ growing control over writing skills in genreoriented approaches, where sociocultural theories of scaffolded instruction and learning are important. Here feedback is important in providing students with the rhetorical choices central to new academic or professional literacy skills and as a way of assisting students in negotiating access to new knowledge and practices. A. Sociocultural Aspect © 2011 ACADEMY PUBLISHER III. FEEDBACK ASPECTS Providing feedback is a an activity in which there is interaction between learners and their peers or their teacher, where the purpose is to encourage student writers‘ development or at least to encourage positive changes in subsequent writing. Now the question is what role this interaction might play in that development. From an interactionist point of view the answer is suggested by recent work in second language learning, which has shifted attention away from mentalist models of linguistic development to interactive ones. This has meant a shift away from terms such as linguistic competence, the linguistic environment (Long, 1996), comprehensible input, and I +1 (Krashen, 1985) –terms which emphasize learners‘ internal cognitive processes, to those which highlight interactions among speakers: communicative competence, negotiation of meaning, and comprehensible output. The last of these is key to the ―output hypothesis‖, which was proposed by Swain (1985) to account for the finding that children in immersion language programs who has spent many years surrounded by meaningful L2 input and attained high levels of spoken fluency, nevertheless failed to reach similarly high levels of linguistic accuracy. Swain proposed that these learners needed not just opportunities to produce the L2, which they had in abundance, but that they also needed to be pushed to modify their speech (for example to an apparent breakdown in communication). As learners modify their linguistic output towards greater comprehensibility, their awareness of grammatical form is heightened, and they move from semantic to syntactic processing (Swain, 1995). With its obvious relevance to classroom L2 learning, the output hypothesis has provided theoretical grounding for a number of recent studies in focus of form (for example. Doughty & Williams, 1998) and corrective feedback (for example, Lyster & Ranta, 1997) that have reevaluated the place of grammar within communicative teaching methodologies. Although these developments have asserted a more prominent role for interaction in second language learning, they have maintained an essentially mentalist orientation in that constructs like comprehensible output are seen as external mechanisms for internal language acquisition process. The role of interaction can also be examined from a sociocultural perspective (Lantolf, 2000). Foundational to the sociocultural theory is the developmental theory of Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky, who maintained that psychological phenomena must be understood not only ontogenetically (that is, as unfolding internal processes), but also in terms of their cultural and historical evolution (Kozulin, 1986). In contrast to Piaget, Vygotsky posited that speech originates in interpersonal communication during a period in which the child is wholly oriented towards the physical environment and the adults in it. Eventually, the child begins to engage in egocentric (private) speech, which is uttered aloud but not intended as communication with others. Finally, egocentric speech becomes fully internalized as inner speech, which is a cognitive tool of the mature adult (Vygotsky, 1986). Vygotsky also posited that learning is neat, linear process, that it is not evolutionary but revolutionary, often occurring in fits and starts rather than clear stages (Kozulin, 1986). Moreover, learning is enhanced when the child‘s cognitive resources are expanded through assistance from more able others, peers or teachers. Vygotsky used the concept of ―zone of proximal development‖ (ZPD) to describe the conceptual space that enables children to make cognitive leaps beyond their own independent problemsolving skills when they are working with an adult or more mature peer (Vygotsky, 1986). One way of conceptualizing movement within ZPD, which is relevant to discussion feedback provision, has been Wertsch‘s (1979a, 1979b) categorization of stages of regulation, or control over intellectual actions. Wertsch has proposed that, in the transition from interpsychological to itrapsychological activity, the learner moves from other regulation to complete self regulation. When other regulated the learner can perform with assistance from others. The learner achieves self regulation when, in the course of ZPD interactions, he can take control of external actions and is capable of independent problem solving. Because assistance in the ZPD is extended as long as other regulation persists but is removes once the learner can function independently, it has been metaphorically conceived as a form of scaffolding. However, interactionist theories stand in sharp contrast to sociocultural theories in terms of the role assumed for the interaction. In interactionist theories of learning interaction is seen merely as a means of modifying input for the learner. 1137
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The Relationship between Self-effic
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