Amerah Abdullah ALSHARİF, Hesham Suleiman ALYOUSEF

Investigating ESL/EFL students‘ approaches in response to revision processes: A case study

The issues surrounding giving feedback to second language (L2) learners have attracted the interests of a number of researchers to date. Most continue to wonder how to give L2 students effective feedback. Some studies found that ESL/EFL students focus mainly on surface-level issues, those that relate to grammatical and mechanical aspects of writing, when attending to teacher feedback. Others found that students attend to meaning-level feedback as well, which relates to meaning changes, such as sentence clarification or the request to add a topic sentence. This raises a question: why do some students focus on surface-level issues while others focus on meaning-level issues? This study aimed to identify and understand the revision approach of six highly motivated ESL/EFL learners, analyzing their texts and confirming the results from their own point of view. We employed three data sources: structured and retrospective interviews, the students‘ written texts, and the tutors‘ written feedback. The students‘ revised drafts were analyzed using Faighly and Witte‘s (1981) taxonomy of revisions, which helped to clarify the dominant features of the students‘ revisions. Even though the students were at the same proficiency level, half of them focused on broader meaning-level changes (labeled as global-oriented students) and the other half were inclined to focus on surface-level changes (labeled as local-oriented students). Determining whether learners are local or global in their orientation is important in increasing the impact of feedback in perfecting students‘ writing. Further investigation on this issue may significantly improve the way in which written feedback is provided and utilized.

İngilizceyi yabancı dil olarak öğrenen öğrencilerin düzeltme sürecine yönelik yaklaşımları: Durum çalışması

İkinci dil öğrenenlere dönüt verme ile ilgili konular araştırmacıların ilgisini çekmektedir. Birçoğu etkili dönütün nasıl verildiğini merak etmektedir. Araştırmalar İngilizceyi ikinci dil ya da yabancı dil olarak öğrenen öğrenciler genellikle yüzeysel yani dil bilgisel ya da mekanik hatalara yönelik dönütlere odaklanmaktadır. Bazıları ise daha çok anlamsal yani anlam değişikliği, cümleye açıklık getirme ya da konu cümlesi ekleme gibi dönütlere odaklanmaktadır. Bu durum neden bazı öğrenciler yüzeysel hatalara odaklanırken diğerleri anlam ile ilgili hatalara odaklanmaktadır sorusunu akıllara getirmektedir. Bu çalışmanın amacı 6 tane yüksek motivasyonlu İngilizceyi ikinci/ yabancı dil olarak öğrenen öğrencinin metinlerini inceleyerek ve öğrencilerin kendi bakış açılarından doğrulayarak onların revizyon yaklaşımlarını ortaya çıkarmak için yapılmıştır. Bu çalışmada yapılandırılmış ve geriye dönük görüşmeler, öğrencilerin yazılı metinleri ve öğretmenin yazılı dönütü veri toplama aracı olarak kullanılmıştır. Öğrencilerin tekrar düzenlediği taslakları Faighly ve Witte‘ın (1981)yeniden gözden geçirme taksonomisi kullanılarak analiz edilmiştir. Öğrenciler aynı seviyede olmalarına rağmen yarısı (yerele odaklı öğrenciler) yüzeysel, diğer yarısı (genele odaklı öğrenciler) ise anlam ile ilgili dönütlere odaklanmıştır. Öğrencilerin genel ya da yerel odaklı olduklarını belirmek onlara verilen dönütün etkili olması açısından önemlidir. Bu konu ile ilgili gelecek araştırmalar yazılı dönütün veriliş şeklini geliştirilmesinde etkili olabilir.

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