書面聚焦式修正性回饋對於大一英文學生冠詞習得之成效

Abstract

自從Truscott(1996)呼籲教師廢止書面修正性回饋，其有效性一直都備具爭 議性。由於書面修正性回饋之早期研究多有研究方法上之疏漏，過去十年來學者 們致力於改善此類研究之研究設計，並普遍發現在以英語為第二語言的教學情境 中，用以訂正學生冠詞使用(a/an 用以表示名詞為「第一次提及」，the 用以表示「前指照應」)的聚焦式修正性回饋有助於提升學生冠詞使用的正確度。為了瞭 解此現象是否亦會在以英語為外語的教學情境中發生，本研究旨在探究書面聚焦 式修正性回饋對於臺灣大學生冠詞習得之影響。然而，和先前研究不同，本研究 將訂正範圍擴增至所有名詞片語之冠詞使用，且採用生態效度較高的研究設計 (寫作測驗和寫作作業配合課程教學進度、讓學生在家修改作業、訂正範圍擴增 等)，並另外探討兩項學習者因子─「語言分析能力」和「對文法正確度態度」 ─是否調節聚焦式修正性回饋對學生冠詞使用進步幅度之影響。 本研究以參與大一英文課程的兩班中高級程度學生作為實驗對象，並採用 「前測─後測─延宕後測」之研究設計。所有實驗對象皆完成三項寫作測驗以測 量其冠詞使用的正確度。在前測和後測之間，所有實驗對象另外完成了三項寫作 作業、取得回饋並依據回饋進行修改。作為實驗組的一班，其冠詞使用，在此三 項作業上其冠詞使用得到聚焦式修正性回饋及後設語言解釋；做為控制組的另一 班，在此三項作業上只取得和寫作內容、組織和風格相關之評語，未得到聚焦式 修正性回饋。研究對象之語言分析能力是由語言分析測驗測得，而其對寫作文法 正確度之態度則透過一份態度問卷評量。 研究結果顯示，雖然在前測上兩組的英文冠詞使用正確性具顯著差異，在後 測和延後測上，兩組的冠詞使用表現皆無顯著差異。此外，實驗組內的長期學習 增益達到邊際顯著水準，而控制組卻沒有達到顯著水準。不過，學生的語言分析 能力並未具顯著調節聚焦式修正性回饋對學生冠詞使用進步幅度之效果，其對文 法正確度之態度亦無顯著調節此類回饋對學生冠詞使用進步幅度之效果。本研究 結果顯示在生態效度較高的研究設計下聚焦式修正性回饋較難達到正面效果。本 研究的結果可作為英文老師有效使用聚焦式修正性回饋之參考，也提供一些修正 性回饋以外的建議可幫助學生改善其冠詞使用。The effectiveness of written corrective feedback (WCF) has long been a controversial issue since Truscott’s (1996) call for abandoning this teaching practice. Early research on WCF also suffered various methodological problems. In the past decade, researchers have used more rigorous research design to understand the effectiveness of WCF, and they generally find that in an ESL instructional setting, focused WCF which is directed only at L2 students’ use of articles (more specifically, a/an for the first-mention usage, and the for the anaphoric usage) can help improve their accuracy of article use. To understand whether this phenomenon would also occur in an EFL instructional setting, this study investigated the effect of focused WCF on Taiwanese college students’ acquisition of articles. But different from previous research, this study expanded the treatment scope to all English articles in noun phrases and adopted a research design of more ecological validity, where the writing tests and tasks were synchronized with the schedule of the course, take-home revisions were involved, and the treatment scope was expanded. Moreover, two other factors, the students’ language analytic ability and their attitudes toward grammatical accuracy in writing, were also included to explore if they would moderate the effect of focused WCF on their short-term and longer-term gains in article use accuracy. The participants came from two high-intermediate level classes in a freshman English course. This study adopted a pretest-posttest-delayed posttest design, and all of the participants were required to complete three writing tests, which were designed to probe into their article use accuracy. Between the pretest and the immediate posttest were three treatment tasks, and all participants were required to revise after receiving feedback. While one class served as the experimental group and received focused WCF with metalinguistic explanations on their article use in the treatment tasks, the other class served as the control group and did not receive focused WCF but comments on content, organization, and style in the treatment tasks. The participants’ language analytic ability was measured by a language analysis test, and their attitudes toward grammatical accuracy in writing were gauged by an attitude questionnaire. The results demonstrate that though there was a significant difference between the two groups in the pretest, there were no significant differences between the two groups in the immediate and delayed posttests. Furthermore, the improvement from pretest to delayed posttest reached a marginal significant level for the experimental group but not for the control group. However, the students’ language analytic ability was not found to significantly moderate the effect of focused written CF on their short-term or longer-term gains in article use accuracy, and neither did their attitudes toward grammatical accuracy. The findings of this thesis, on the one hand, suggest the potential difficulty of achieving the positive effect of focused WCF in an ecologically valid research design. On the other hand, the findings offer some implications for English teachers to utilize focused WCF in a more efficient condition and some alternative ways to help students improve their article use.