As Humanism emphasizes emotional factors, pays attention to providing a safelearning environment for learners in the process of learning, and respects learners’ needsand emotions, teachers should pay attention to reducing students’ uneasiness aboutwritten feedback, meeting students’ needs, and protecting students’ motivation forwriting.
Chapter 3 Research Design..........................19
3.1 Research Questions............................... 19
3.2 Participants.................................. 19
3.3 Research Instruments..........................20
Chapter 4 Results and Discussion..............................24
4.1 Results and Discussion of the Quantitative Data.............................. 24
4.1.1 Motivational Types....................................24
4.1.2 General Situation of preferences of Written Corrective Feedback............28
Chapter 5 Conclusion...............................42
5.1 Main Findings of the Study..............................42
5.2 Implications..................................... 44
Chapter 4 Results and Discussion
4.1 Results and Discussion of the Quantitative Data
The hierarchical cluster analysis and the k-means analysis were employed to identifydistinct motivational types. And then the general situation of WCF preferences anddifferent motivation-type learners’ preferences are presented. Finally, the reasons for thedifferences on WCF preferences are analyzed.
4.1.1 Motivational Types
The detailed information of the 5 clusters is shown in Table 4-1 to Table 4-5 below.As is shown in Table 4.1, the percentages of the five clusters are 9.0%, 19.8%, 28.8%,26.8%, and 15.6%, representing 19, 42, 61, 57, 33 respectively in number of students ineach cluster.
Students belong to the first cluster (G1 in Table 4.1) possess the lowest scores inalmost all the motivational variables, reflected in the scores on IL2S, OL2S, SLEE, FAMIand CA, which are all below 3.00. Referring to IPRO and IPRE, Group 1 fall on the upperhalf of the Likert scale, that is M>3. This indicates that these students possess a lowerlevel of motivation than students in other groups. Learners in Group 1 could be called as‘bystander learner’, for they show the lowest scores on almost every motivational factor.Besides, their inner desire and aspiration were not high enough, and they didn’t get muchpositive influence from the outside world, such as teachers, classmates or families. Whatis more, their learning experiences didn’t generate much positive influences on them.
Chapter 5 Conclusion
5.1 Main Findings of the Study
According to the results gathered from the questionnaire and interviews, fivedifferent motivational types are revealed, senior high school students’ preferences ofWCF are shown, and the reasons for their specific preferences are presented.
First, the questionnaire shows that general learners prefer type 1, that is they want toreceive written comments (in English), error corrections and grades (scores) at the sametime. Besides, students also show a preference for the combination of two WCF methodsrather than a single method. The general means of these five manners reflect ahierarchical preferences of each group, and they prefer Manner 2 (Underline my mistake,use code to identify the type of mistake and I correct it). This suggests that students,rather than fully depend on the teachers for error correction, prefer to correct their errorsby themselves with a slight indication from the teacher. This also manifests that learnerswould like the mistakes to be pointed out and the clues are given, since the clues given bytheir teachers could help them correct the errors easily and quickly. Among four types oferrors listed as Object 1, Object 2, Object 3, Object 4, learners pay more attention to thefirst three and less attention to Obje
