Examining the Effects of Conferencing and Reflection Paper in an EFL Writing Class

Abstract

L2 writing debate regarding the value of students’ feedback on their writing has been
prominent in recent years. This study explores whether the types of feedbacks (student-teacher
conferences; students’ reflection paper) given to college sophomore, English-major students on their
writing organization (e.g., thesis and topic sentences generating) and linguistic errors (e.g., subject and
verb argument, verb tenses) resulted in improved their writing works over a 18 week period. Thirty EFL
Chinese students were asked to compose two writings, a narrative essay and an expository essay. After
that, participants had opportunities to discuss their works during student –teacher 15-minutes individual
conferences. Analyses of their completed essays and reflection paper revealed that revealed that these
students had positive attitude toward student-teacher conferences and facilitated them generate and
organize their ideas in their drafts. Additionally, students were more likely to pay attention to their
organization instead of their grammar errors after having writing conferences with a teacher. Finally, the
students’ reflection papers showed that students were more aware of self-correction about their linguistic
errors in their revised subsequent drafts after having conferences with a teacher. Their self-correction
concerning organization and grammar errors had a significant effect for the teacher’s written feedback
and conferences. Some pedagogical suggestions are provided for effectively using student-teacher
conferences and students’ reflection paper in second- and foreign language writing classrooms.