The Practice of Feedback Provision in teaching writing skills: Adu Sigimo High School Grade 10 in Focus

Abstract

The goal of this study w as to investigate the practices of feedback provision in teaching writing skills at Adu Sigimo high school. To attain the purpose, a  descriptive research method was employed. The participants of the study were 126 grade 10 students and five English language teachers. Close and open ended questionnaires were used to gather data from the participants. Classroom observation and text analysis on teachers’ written commentary on students’ written composition were employed to triangulate the findings of the questionnaires. The collected data were analyzed using descriptive survey statistics, frequency and percentage. The study showed that the teachers and students had positive perception towards the contribution of feedback provision in improving writing skills. The study also showed that teachers don’t provide regular writing activities which create conducive environment and encourage multi draft writing. The study further showed that the teachers were not selective in the types of feedback and focus on surface features of writing than major features of students writing in their feedback. Moreover, the teachers rarely provide immediate feedback for students’ writing and they usually provide summative feedback on the final drafts of students’ papers. Based on the findings, the researchers recommended that teachers should consider that writing is a recursive process in which it passes through different phases. Therefore, to help students improve their writing skills, they should provide regular writing activities that encourage multi-drafting process and create opportunities to practice different types of feedback.

Key words: Feedback, peer-feedback, teacher-feedback, writing process, summative feedback,  immediate feedback