VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY-HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST GRADUATE STUDIES
------------------------

NGUYỄN THI ̣QUỲ NH THU

USING INDIRECT CORECTIVE FEEDBACK ON STUDENTS’
WRITING TO IMPROVE WRITING SKILLS FOR GRADE 10TH
MIXED LEVEL STUDENTS AT VAN NOI HIGH SCHOOL IN
DONG ANH, HANOI- AN ACTION RESEARCH
(VIỆC SỬ DỤNG VIỆC SỬA LỖI GIÁN TIẾP ĐỂ CẢI THIỆN KỸ NĂNG
VIẾT CHO HỌC SINH LỚP 10 CÓ TRÌNH ĐỘ KHÁC NHAU TẠI
TRƯỜNG THPT VÂN NỘI, ĐÔNG ANH, HÀ NỘI, MỘT NGHIÊN CỨU
HÀNH ĐỘNG)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology
Code: 60140111

HANOI – 2017


VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY-HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST GRADUATE STUDIES

------------------------

NGUYỄN THI ̣QUỲ NH THU

Nguyễn Thi Quy
̣
̀ nh Thu

i


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to express my gratitude to all those who have given me great
assistance in the completion of my research work.
In the first place, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor
Nguyen Thi Minh Tam, Ph.D, who has provided me with insightful discussion,
helpful comments, valuable support in the preparation and completion of this thesis.
Without her guidance and help, this work would not have been accomplished.
Secondly, my sincere thanks also go to all lecturers and staff of the department
of Post- Graduate studies for their valuable lessons and precious helps. Thanks to
their lessons as well as needed helps, I could overcome enormous obstacles when
doing the study.
I also wish to acknowledge the cooperation of my colleagues and the students at
Van Noi high school in contributing to the data collection presented in this study.
Last but not least, I would like to express my deepest thanks to my family for
their encouragement and great support during my time of fulfilling this thesis.

ii


ABSTRACT
Most second language learners encounters difficulties when writing in the
target language. For the students at Van Noi high school, the problem might be
serious. Because of their different and especially low levels when entering this

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW .......................................................................... 4
1.1.

Learning and teaching writing skill in English as a foreign language ..........4

1.2.

Types of CF in writing...................................................................................4

1.3.

Teacher‟s ICF feedback in writing ................................................................7

1.4.

Effects of ICF on students' ESL/EFL writing ...............................................9

1.5.

A brief review of previous studies on CF ......................................................9

Summary ....................................................................................................................................... 13
CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY ..................................................................................... 14
2.1. Rationale for the use of Action research.........................................................14
2.2. Context of the study ........................................................................................16
2.3. Subjects ...........................................................................................................16
2.4. Research instruments ......................................................................................17
2.4.1. The researcher’s analysis of the students’ writings (See Appendices for
more detail) ........................................................................................................17


Student

CF:

Corrective feedback

DCF:

Direct corrective feedback

EFL:

English as Foreign Language

ELT:

English Language Teaching

ESL:

English as Second Language

ICF:

Indirect corrective feedback

WS:

Writing Session


number. As an effort to address this lack, this paper aims to retrospectively provide
a relatively comprehensive and systematic overview of the development of L2
writing research and to summarize the unsolved problems so as to inspire future
studies. Due to quite varied research interests of individual researchers, it will not
be possible neither necessary for us to report every study in great detail. So, in this
research, a review of the studies on the major topics in the five areas of L2 writing
research and their findings will be presented, which, we firmly believe, will help
those inexperienced L2 writing researchers and those interested in this field of
inquiry to know better about the development of L2 writing research. Also, based
on the existing literature, we will propose a few unsolved problems which require
further discussion.
At Van Noi High School, writing is not being taught as a single subject in the
English curriculum; yet it is treated as a skill integrated with all other skills
supporting a specific theme or topic in each unit in the course book. In fact, as
observed from the author‟s teaching experience, when dealing with a writing
assignment, the students at Van Noi High School do not often struggle with ideas
since a number of language activities and skills supporting the writing topics
have been conducted as pre-writing tasks preceding the students‟ self-written
compositions in every unit. Then the major problem relatively prevalent among
the students falls into their language use which is indicated by their grammatical
1


errors, lexical choice errors and mechanics errors; as a result of these errors,
writing accuracy as well as the quality of the students‟ written work has been
considerably diminished.
Facing these afore-stated issues, a number of strategies have been introduced
in teachers‟ writing instruction; however, treating the students‟ language errors in
their written documents, or giving corrective feedback (CF), is regarded as the
most preferable tactic used by teachers at Van Noi High School. In fact, direct

By bringing out the result of the influence of using ICF on the students‟ writing
at Van Noi high school in Dong Anh, Hanoi, the study hopefully will somehow
make the following contributions. First, the finding of the study may be served as
reference to EFL teachers to gear their teaching towards a more effective approach
to the teaching of writing. Second, the dissemination of findings could help me and
my colleagues to better our own teaching at Van Noi High School, as well as those
who are teaching English writing skill to high school students at other schools in
Vietnam with the same situation as at Van Noi High School.
6. Organization of the study
The study is organized into the following parts as follows:
INTRODUCTION presents the background and the statement of the problem
for conducting the study, aims of the study, research questions, the scope as well as
the significance of the study.
Chapter 1 – LITERATURE REVIEW - provides a theoretical framework for the
study, including process approach in ESL/EFL writing, writing accuracy, students‟ written
errors and teacher‟s ICF in ESL/EFL writing.
Chapter 2 – METHODOLOGY - deals with an overview of Van Noi High
School as well as English teaching and learning at the school, and then describes the
methodology used in the research including data collection instruments, participants,
the procedures employed to carry out the research.
Chapter 3 - FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS – reports and discusses the
findings of the study.
CONCLUSION summarizes the main issues that have been addressed in the
study, points out the limitations, draws pedagogical implications concerning the
research topic and suggests several solutions.
Following this chapter will be the REFERENCES and APPENDICES

3



Many

teachers and researchers – Ferris (1999) was one of the first – felt that Truscott´s
claim that “grammar correction is ineffective and potentially harmful and should
therefore be banned (Truscott‟s, 1996, p.118)” was premature and totally false.
4


Despite this consensus in the teacher profession, extensive research was needed to
be able to falsify this claim and to find out how feedback should be given in order to
have the greatest effect on students writing skill.
Feedback in general refers to that specific information teachers provide to
their students related to the task or learning process. The purpose is to fill in the gap
between what the student understands at the moment and what is aimed to be finally
understood (Hattie & Timperley, 2007). Furthermore a distinction has to be made
between ICF as the different effects of these two types of feedback is what is aimed
to be investigated. One easily understood definition of these two is: “While indirect
corrective feedback only consists of an indication of an error (i.e. by underlining the
error or providing an error code), direct error correction identifies both the error and
the target form” (Van Beuningen, 2008, p. 282). Therefore indirect correction of
errors is left to the student to find and correct (Zaman & Azad, 2012), while the
teacher provides the correct form in direct error correction (Ellis, 2009A).
Furthermore Ellis gives a brief explanation of all different corrective feedback (CF)
types that are being used in research. The types of feedback in the table 1.1 cover all
types used in the studies reviewed in this paper.
Some researchers report no significant difference between the direct and ICF.
In their research, Robb et al. investigate four types of feedback including direct
feedback and indirect feedback where the number of errors was given in each line
of text. However, the students‟ improvement in accuracy in Robb et al.‟s and Ferris
& Roberts‟s is considered only by the revised texts instead of by students‟ new

correction.
A: Indicating + Locating the error

This takes the form of underlining and
use of cursors to show omissions in the
student´s text.

B: Indication only

This takes the form of an indication in
the margin that an error or errors have
taken place in a line of text.

3. Metalinguistic CF

The teacher provides some kind of
metalinguistic clue to the nature of the
error

A: Use of error code

Teacher writes codes in the margin (e.g.
ww = wrong word; art = article).

B: Brief grammatical Description

Teacher numbers errors in text and
writes a grammatical description for
each numbered error at the bottom of the
text.



make the language seem as native-like
as possible while keeping the content of
the original intact.

1.3. Teacher’s ICF feedback in writing
The role and treatment of errors or CF has been viewed differently within
different theories of SLA. These differing views also have had an impact on the
research on corrective feedback in SLA and L2 writing. The following subsection
gives the different ways to give CF in L2 writing.
The type of feedback a teacher gives will no doubt affect how their students
approach the writing process, view feedback, and make revisions to their writing
(Hedgcock & Lefkowitz, 1996; Lockhart & Ng, 1995). In order to make this clear, a
number of L2 writing research studies have seen quite a wide range of features in
students‟ L2 written texts that teachers respond to, such as students‟ ideas, rhetoric
organization, grammar, word choices, spelling, and punctuation (Conrad &
Goldstein, 1999; Ferris, 1995, 1997; Ferris, Pezone, Tade & Tinki, 1997; Hedgcock
& Lefkowitz, 1994; Reid, 1994; Saito, 1994).

Teacher‟s ICF is a combined

strategy which embraces all the characteristics of the contained types in dealing
with written errors. Generally, teacher‟s ICF, as described in Bitchener and Ferris‟s
(2012), is the teacher‟s action of drawing students‟ attention to the locations of their
errors without providing corrections. In a more comprehensive way, Joe describes
the way a teacher implicit the existence of errors needed repairing in students‟
written work. Two preceding approaches to teacher‟s ICF relatively reveal the
nature of the assigned strategy, yet its description of teacher‟s operations has not
been clarified in the definitions. Conceptualized by Ellis (2006), ICF is defined as


T

4

Article

Art.

5

Pronoun

Pro

6

Preposition

Pre

7

Subject-Verb Agreement

S-V

8

Singular


Ro.

14.

Word choice

WC

To make the concept clearer, Ellis (2009) also provides the comparative
consideration of another CF type which is always in pairs with ICF, namely teacher‟
direct corrective feedback (DCF). This type of CF draws students‟ attention to the
error and requires a solution to it; in other words, the teacher shows students where
the errors are and corrects these errors by supplying the correct form. Consequently,
based on the all ideas above, especially on Ellis‟s framework (2009), and
considering the scope of the research, it can be acknowledged that teacher‟s ICF is
the strategy in which errors are underlined, circled, highlighted, written with cursors
or marked with codes without teacher‟s direct correction in the process of writing.
Students will play a centered role in doing a writing task while teacher will act as an
indicator of students' errors. The author considers this the most appropriate
framework adopted as the working definition throughout the study.

8


1.4. Effects of ICF on students' ESL/EFL writing
Investigation into whether CF has effects on students‟ writing has involved a
great number of studies, yet there is also controversy among researchers about the
benefits of CF on ESL/EFL learners‟ written outcomes. Truscott concludes that all
error correction is unnecessary, ineffective, and even harmful since it diverts time


and

Author

Title

Chandler

Study

(1982)

investigation into Group 1: Correction of is

description
1:

An Study

1 Study 1: Correction

the efficacy of the grammatical
correction

errors Direct

grammatical and Group
Study



lexical errors.

Findings

are

significantly

error Group 2: Underlining superior

correction should and
be done

to

describing the types

description

of

error of

type

errors

reducing long-term


feedback

written feedback

over

on the writing of

correction.

60

statistical difference

intermediate

German

FL

was

learners

between

error
No
reported
the


on feedback Control 1: Direct

writing accuracy

Self-editing

but

corrective

no feedback

is

feedback Control 2: effective for better
No self-editing and no grammatical
feedback

accuracy

and

indirect feedback is
better

for

non-



Focused Focused

and

and feedback on articles unfocused

unfocused

Group 2: Unfocused corrective

corrective

feedback

feedback

Control

Group

3: feedback improved
students‟

compared with no

accuracy

feedback.



studies

on

corrective

feedback.

11

should
corrective


feedback
Nguyen

Thi Effectiveness

of Group

1:

indirect The research shows

Khanh (2012) indirect corrective corrective feedback
feedback

in Group


National

group

and their positive

University

of

attitudes

Education

towards

the use of teacher‟s
ICF in writing

Pham

Lan The

Anh (2011)

impact

of Group 1: using DCF



than

their

counterparts in the
control group when
errors are treated as
a single group. ICF
helps reduce more
error categories and
more errors in each
category, especially
those related to the
simple past tense.
It is obvious that all the studies and articles above focus on the effectiveness
of ICF in different educational setting. The common point of these studies is that
they were conducted with the support of experimental or quasi-experimental
method. Two groups – experimental and control – were administered with different
12


CF strategies, and their performance in two tests – pretests and posttest – will be
used to assess the degree of effectiveness. From all the studies as mentioned, the
research came to the hypothesis that ICF could have positive impact on students‟
writing skill. This action research, therefore, is conducted in order to find out the
extent to which ICF influence the writing skill of students at Van Noi high school.
With all of her expectation, the study brought about the most convincing and
consistent findings of ICF effects in writing in her educational setting.
Summary

The Action Research Process
There is no consensus on the number of stages involved in an action
research. While a researcher lists eleven stages (Burn, 2005), another research only
lists six or seven stages. Most of the action research models were influenced by the
work of Kurt Lewin who in 1940s proposed a four-stage action cycle: planning,
acting, observing and reflecting.

14


Figure 1: Cycle of Action Research. Adapted from Richards & Lockhart (1998,
p.12).
The other model of action research suggested by Kemmis & McTaggart (2000, p.
564) gives a deeper understanding of the cyclical processes involved in action
research. However, due to limited time of this research, the researcher find it hard to
apply Kemmis and McTaggart‟s (2000) model in the real teaching and research
context. The model of action research proposed by Nunan (1990) is, therefore,
chosen.
The theoretical framework for the design of the thesis followed the model of
action research proposed by Nunan (1992). This is one of many action research
procedures described by many researchers. However, the reason why I chose it is
the simplicity of the way it is presented by the author as well as its appropriateness
regarding the context of the study. According to Nunan (2012:35), a cycle of action
research consists of the following steps:
● Step1: Initiation
● Step 2: Preliminary investigation
● Step 3: Hypotheses
● Step 4: Intervention
● Step 5: Evaluation
● Step 6: Dissemination

the student stay focused on their writing work during a period.
2.3. Subjects
The subjects of the study were 15 students from group 10 with mixed level
of English. They were randomly chosen and coded from S1 to S15 when taking part
in this research and feel excited to the new way of correcting feedback that the
teacher applied.

16