Writing Evaluation and Feedback

Abstract

This study examines the influence of the prior announcement of evaluation and feedback methods (on accuracy and content) on students’ argumentative essays. For this purpose, the participants, whose grammatical knowledge was in the same range, were divided into two groups (Group A and Group B). Different strategies of evaluation and feedback were announced before the actual writing (“accuracy and content” for Group A and “only content” for Group B). The essays were scored, and the influence of grammatical knowledge on these essays was quantitatively analyzed for Group A and Group B independently using structural equation modeling (SEM). Results showed that the participants’ grammatical knowledge was more efficiently utilized for argumentative essay writing when it was announced beforehand that their essays would be evaluated only on content (Group B) rather than on both accuracy and content (Group A). From the questionnaire survey results, many Group A students admitted that they had difficulties balancing between accuracy and content. Meanwhile, many Group B students acknowledged that it encouraged them to focus on content and enhance their argumentative skill although their attention to accuracy seemed to remain to some extent. In this context, the study results seem to imply that English writing instruction must reconsider the traditional evaluation focus on accuracy to become more oriented toward content and comprehension.