The primary aim of this study is to determine whether it is possible to standardize
written feedback on L2 student writing for use in a computerised marking
environment. It forms part of a bigger project aimed at enhancing the feedback
process as a whole
The study attempts to establish "best practice" with regards to feedback on writing, by
establishing from the literature what works and what should be avoided. Also, an
empirical study was launched to establish what lecturers focus on and what marking
techniques they use. A set of randomly selected essays from the Tswana Learner
English Corpus and the Afrikaans Learner English Corpus were sent to the English
departments of different tertiary institutions across the country. The essays were
marked by the English lecturers at the relevant institutions. The conclusion was that
lecturers typically focus on surface structures, and use ineffective marking techniques.
The best practice (and data from the empirical study) was then used to create a set of
standardised feedback comments (tag set) that can be used in a specially programmed
software package in which students submit their texts electronically. Lecturers can
then mark the student essays on the computer, hopefully speeding up the process,
while at the same time giving much more detailed feedback. In later stages of the
bigger project, students will get individualized exercises based on the feedback, and there are experiments currently being run to try and automate certain pans of the
marking process in order to take some strain off the lecturers when marking. The
immense archiving abilities of the computer will also be utilized in order to create
opportunities for longitudinal studies.
The effectiveness of the feedback tag set was tested in comparison to the marking
techniques used by the lecturers in the empirical study and a self-correcting exercise.
The conclusion was that the feedback tag set is more effective than the other two
techniques. but students seem to perform weak overall when it gets to the revision of
cohesive devices and supporting arguments. I argue that students are not used to
revising these features, since lecturers seldom (if ever) comment on the structural
elements of texts. However, the experiment proves that standardization of written
feedback is possible to an extent.
The implications of the findings are discussed, and recommendations for further
research are made. / Thesis (M.A. (English))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2006
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:NWUBOLOKA1/oai:dspace.nwu.ac.za:10394/1718 |
| Date | January 2006 |
| Creators | Louw, Henk |
| Publisher | North-West University |
| Source Sets | North-West University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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