EFFECTIVENESS OF DESCRIPTIVE PRAISE ON THE ENGLISH COMPOSITION SKILL OF BRIDGING STUDENTS

Lucille D. Saraspe, Ferdinand T. Abocejo

Abstract


This study determined the effectiveness of teacher’s descriptive praise on the English composition skill of bridging students in a privately run secondary education institution in Lapu-lapu City, Cebu, Philippines. It was carried out though a quasi-experimental research design with crossover. This research made use of two groups; one receiving detailed feedback through descriptive praise on a previously written essay, and another not receiving any. The first phase made use of one intact section acting as the control group and another intact section as the experimental group. The second phase was completed by crossing over the two groups. The intact section assigned to the control group during the first phase was assigned to the experimental group in the second phase, and the reverse for the other intact section group. The researchers employed descriptive and inferential statistics analyses of data collected from the students’ outputs. Analyses were focused on the pre-test and post-test English composition skill level of bridging students, the significant difference in the English composition skill levels in the pre-test and post-test and the significant improvement in the English composition skill levels of the students from pre-test to the post-test. This study was anchored on Feedback Intervention Theory advocated by Kluger and DeNisi and from the Law of Recency by Thorndike. Findings revealed that a bridging student may improve his English composition skill even without the use of descriptive praise as this type of feedback intervention improved the bridging student’s English compositions skill only as far as the basic level. It is concluded that the use of descriptive praise alone in effecting improvement on the students’ English composition skill is not adequate. The authors hereby suggest the application of other forms of feedback interventions such as mediated learning opportunities, careful scaffolding, corrective information or even computer-provided feedback mechanism.


Keywords


descriptive praise, feedback intervention, English compositions skill, bridging students, feedback intervention theory, law of recency

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References


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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.46827/ejel.v5i4.3140

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