Análisis de la entrevista grupal a los residentes de la comunidad

What are Libyan students’ attitudes before and after getting face to face feedback?

Do EFL/ESL Libyan students who participate in the study (experimental group) hold a positive attitude towards face to face feedback as investigated by the interview?

It was an interest to me to establish whether the adoption and use of face-to-face feedback has an impact on students’ ideas about improving their learning skills in writing.

At the beginning of the interview, I asked the participants to explain what they considered to be good writing as I was interested in finding out whether students have different views and what they think is important in academic writing. Also my aim was to know if they are in concord with their writing teachers or not. Most of the students shared identical perception of what they want their writing to be like and also what they expect their teachers to want them to do during the course. The participants put emphasis on the structure and organization of ideas as well as the language. They stated that writing at university is a challenge and the most demanding tasks

The information derived from student interviews provided significantly explicit information about their attitude towards several fields such as: the use of face-to-face feedback, opportunities they get when this feedback is used, and the problems they may face. The qualitative analysis of the interview responses complemented and expanded upon the observation and the quantitative analysis of the quasi -experimental result.

All the mentioned methods pointed out that Libyan students who participated in the study held a positive attitude towards the face-to-face feedback and they started to be interested in writing more than before since-as mentioned above- at the first interview most of the students had a negative attitude towards writing, which later on changed. Chuo’s (2004) study showed that besides language difficulties that has an effect on students’ success in higher education composition; one of the obtrusive issues affecting the students is “the students’ attitude towards their writing task”. Therefore, he urges teachers of writing to come up with innovative and interesting instructional methods…..which encourage students to actively participate in their writing tasks.’’(Darus et al,

2012, p.1090). Drawing on students’ attitude which discussed previously in the analysis of interviews and observation, in my opinion face to face feedback can be considered as an interesting instructional method if this feedback strategy is used by tutors effectively. As with such method, students’ involvement increases and they become more enthusiastic to work and they become more motivated to improve and develop their writing skills. They mainly asserted that the feedback helped them to generate ideas, improve their writing organization, and improve their grammar. They indicate that although it was the first time for them and it is embarrassing somehow they had engaged in a fruitful discussion.

According to Lightbrown and Spada (1999), “When learners are given the opportunity to engage in meaningful activities they are compelled to ‘negotiate for meaning,’ that is, to express and clarify their intentions, thoughts, opinions, etc., in a way which permits them to arrive at a mutual understanding. This goes back to Houpt’s (1984) suggestion regarding the ways to use classroom conversation effective activities. She advocates a three-step process to writing which is: in-class conversations, a written draft and discussing various topics for in- class conversation and how these steps lead to successful writing assignments. Needless to say, Houpt’s recommendation is very significant for instructors who work hard to improve their students writing and anticipate effective writing assignments.

As derived from the interview and observation I think this is true when the face to face feedback is used because when the students interact with their teachers, they can change and reorganize their writing based on their teachers’ comments.

My point of view is confirmed by Pica (1994), when he considered this interaction as a negotiation and he defined it as a “modification and restructuring that occurs when learners and their interlocutors anticipate, perceive, or experience difficulties in message comprehensibility” (p.495). With modifications, students can gain a better understanding of what they need to change in their writing such as repetition, clarification, and conformation checks.

In addition, Gulcat & Ozagac (2004) in their suggestion about correcting and giving feedback indicate that;

“Face-to-face is a particularly useful technique to show the learners the errors in their papers. Students can directly ask the teacher questions on the issues they have trouble with. At the same time the teacher may check the students’ meaning and understanding.’’ (p. 4). This is in line with the idea of Ferris (1995), Ferris and Hedgcock (1998); for example, Ferris indicates that learners usually come across problems in understanding their teachers’ comments because the instructions or comments are not clear. Ferris and Hedgcock explain that learners may ignore revision when they cannot interpret a teachers’ question whether it is a suggestion or request for information. Hence it is suggested that teachers can get students attention when they explain their responding behaviour (Zamel, 1985).

I think this is completely true based on what was obtained from the interview, as I found the following results:

1. Increased student’s enjoyment of writing and engagement when they know how to change and what to change in order to get a good piece of writing.

2. Development of critical thinking skills which helps students to ask questions and recognize their mistakes.

3. Increased students’ attentiveness in class as students were motivated to pay more attention during face to face feedback.

4. students get techniques for effective learning for writing such as:

a) Preparation where the students are prepared to discuss and ask questions with more concentration

b) Exploration where the students explore their weaknesses and their strengths.

c) Clarification when students have the chance to ask about the ambiguity issues as well as to clarify what they mean in their writing. On the contrary written feedback would not offer this chance to students as it has been suggested that “there may be a mismatch between the written feedback teachers provide and the feedback learners would like to perceive’’ ( Owens,2012)

d) Note taking, as students learned when to write notes themselves instead of the teacher’s written comments. So students could read their notes without struggling with handwriting or vague questions/ comments.

e) Students who lacked in confidence while participating changed and became more active in lectures, by asking questions and raising comments.

On the whole, I want to elucidate that with face to face feedback four important factors affect students during the process of writing. These factors are:

f) Individualized attention where there is attention from the teacher to each student or each problem that is faced by students if the discussion is for the entire class.

g) Learner developmental readiness and eagerness because students pay more attention and try to make more effort to improve their writing skill.

h) The intensity of the treatment because both the process and the product of the task are evaluated by the teachers which in return makes students more recognizable in their own work.

i) Consistent focus and linguistic focus where students pay more attention to both writing in general and their linguistic weaknesses in particular.