Dialogic Reflection Writing

The Effect of Research-Informed Reflective Sessions on the Quantity and Quality of Teachers ' Corrective Feedback on Students’ Paragraph Writing

Chapter Ι

Background and Purpose

Writing is the most complex skill for second language learners. This difficulty can not only be attributed to creating and organizing new ideas, but can also be extended to the ability to transfer ideas to the appropriate context (Richards &Rendayana, 2002). Many factors are involved in process of writing that intensify the complexity of writing skill. Factors like mastering the elements of grammar, vocabulary, mechanics, content, organization and style are only few areas to consider in second language writing process (Hyland, 2003).

Another source of difficulty

2.2.1 Dialogic Reflection

Dialogic reflection refers to a less intensive approach that involves ‘discourse with the self’ to explore a given event or incident. It involves considering the decisions and judgments made and possible reasons for these. An example of dialogic reflection is the basic model proposed by Brockbank& McGill (2000).

The individual thinks about what they’re going to do in their lecture, about the information they’d like to convey, the methods they intend to use, the level of engagement and so on, in advance of the delivery of the class. Afterwards they then consider how well they achieved their intended goals and which aspects require further attention.

2.2.2 Critical Reflection

Refers to efforts to accounting for the broader historic, cultural, and political values in framing practical problems to arrive at a solution (Hatton and Smith, 1995). This process has been described as Boyd and Fales (1983) as:

“… the core difference between whether a person repeats the same experience several times becoming highly proficient at one behaviour, or learns from experience in such a way that he or she is cognitively or affectively changed”

This involves engaging with a series of questions that help you to explore and reconsider your motivation or rationale for your actions. These can be designed by a third party or by the individual themselves and serve as a guide through the reflection process. Questions can include: What was I trying to achieve? Why did I do [activity] as I did? What were the consequences of [activity] etc.?

2.4 Different Types of Corrective Feedback

Although majority of language teachers resort to providing correct form of grammatical error and this has become one of the most popular technique among them (Hendrickson, 1990), it is usually recommended that teachers also test other techniques rather than solely relying on a single technique. The first classification of different kinds of feedback was offered by Brown (2007), based on the works of Williams (2005), Ellis (2001), and Panova and Lyster (2004). It is worth to take a short glance at this category:

Recast: an implicit type of corrective feedback which reforms or expands the erroneous utterance in an unnoticeable manner.

Learner: I lost my road. Teacher: Oh, yeah, I see you lost your way. And then what happened?

Clarification Request: Ask the student to reconstruct or repeat