The effectiveness of written feedback on writing is influenced by various variables, including students' proficiency levels, prior learning experiences, expectations and educational contexts. Although Thai students are reported to have serious problems in English writing, which are partly caused by their culturally-based English learning styles, few studies have been conducted to find out how teachers assist them through their feedback. This study thus reports on the practice of teacher feedback in terms of its forms, locations, types and purposes with a consideration of several influential factors in an essay writing class at a university in Thailand. Furthermore, the levels of the students' reactions to the teacher feedback, the effects of their revisions and their revision strategies were also examined. To learn about these students' opinions on the effectiveness of the feedback strategies employed, a survey with the whole class and a focus-group interview were also conducted at the end of the course. The results showed the students' active engagement in responding to the teacher feedback, and this tends to assert the crucial roles of teachers' knowledge of students' learning experiences, English proficiency levels, feedback preferences and classroom settings on the success of written corrective feedback. Though the findings might not be generalized in other EFL settings, they show how in-service teachers adjust feedback strategies in their actual teaching situations to prepare EFL students to become self-regulating writers.
Reflective practice has been proved to be a meaningful way of learning about teaching and various aspects of teachers' work by several studies in different EFL teaching contexts. In Thailand, despite the commonly-reported problems about the English language education program for prospective English teachers, a few studies were conducted on how to improve the situation. By employing the reflective teaching approach, this study reports on how an educator assisted 48 Thai pre-service English teachers to learn how to teach English writing in the Writing Instruction course. The findings from the survey, the teacher-educator's notes during the course and the focus-group interview showed the considerable success of this teaching approach. Furthermore, the information from the evaluations on micro-teaching performances by the teaching groups, their peers and teacher-educator, and the students' reflections on their teaching strengths and weaknesses and their plans for reconstructing their teaching revealed some considerations for improvement. This study is thus expected to not only reflect on how teacher-educators are trying to improve the quality of English preservice-teachers in Thailand and to develop their experiences to be life-long learners, but also provide some insights to enhance reflective prospective teachers in other educational settings with similar teaching and learning cultures.
Writing a thesis in English is challenging for non-native English speaking students, and it is not an exception for Vietnamese master’s (M.A.) students. Despite this challenge, English writing was not formally taught at their elementary, secondary and high school levels until 2008. In their postgraduate programs, these students have little or no formal instruction on how to write each part of a thesis; but are provided with the guidelines and then tailor their own theses. This paper, therefore, explores how 24 Vietnamese teachers of English wrote their thesis Conclusion chapters. By employing the revised framework for analyzing the Conclusion chapters in Applied Linguistics by Chen and Kuo (2012), the study found Deductions from the study (Move 4) is present in every chapter while the other three moves (Introducing the Conclusion chapter, Summarizing the study and Evaluating the study) are conventional. Moreover, a new move (Chapter summary) and an infrequent occurrence of Summarizing previous chapter and a cycle of next section introduction-each section summary were identified. These findings indicate not only a linear structure in composing the concluding chapters by this group of Vietnamese writers but also the rhetorical influence of Vietnamese written discourse on their English writing. The results from this study have some pedagogical implications for teaching novice Vietnamese writers on how to properly compose this genre.
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