ASSESSING THE PRACTICE OF GIVING WRITTEN FEEDBACK ON STUDENTS' PARAGRAPH WRITING: THE CASE OF PREPARATORY STUDENTS OF SOS HERMANN GMEINER SCHOOL, HARAR

Abstract

Teachers’ written feedback is the most widely used form of feedback that students receive on their written work. But which aspect of the written feedback is preferable for students paragraph writing remained a question for most. As a result, teachers have been faced with a constant question of what to focus on when giving feedback to student writing. The aspect of written feedback is, therefore, the central topic of this thesis. The major objective of this study was to assess the practice of giving written feedback on students' paragraph writing. To achieve this objective, descriptive case study research design and mixed research method were used. The sample size included a total of 2 teachers and 128 students. Three instruments like questionnaires, interviews and paragraph analysis were used to collect both qualitative and quantitative data. Semi-structured interview and questionnaire were used for teachers and students respectively. Students’ paragraphs were also analyzed to substantiate the data gathered through questionnaire and interview. The aspects of teacher written feedback, students’ experiences in receiving written feedback, grade and its timing, the preferences of students towards the aspects of feedback to be given were assessed whilst how aspect of written feedback influences or impacts for the development of students’ paragraph writing skills were explicated. The major findings revealed that the aspect of feedback mainly practiced was content feedback and teachers applied post-product feedback where students get feedback and grades at a time. Form feedback and preproduct feedback were not used by the teachers. Therefore, it is better for the teachers to apply both form and content feedback so as to improve their students’ paragraph writing skill development.