Taking into account that feedback is thought to be a fundamental component of the process of scaffolding language learning, the implementation of techniques that seek to enhance such interaction constitute an interesting and necessary focus of current research in second language (L2) writing. After several years of researching feedback—and focusing on its different types and agents—we felt the need to incorporate students’ voices into our research so as to gain a greater and better understanding of the student-teacher interaction during the writing process. In this respect, self-monitoring stands as a valuable process to be explored because it involves the participation of students as the initiators of the process of feedback and subsequent revision of written texts. When referring to some of the theoretical and practical principles underlying feedback on writing, Goldstein (2010) claims that
effective feedback doesn’t start with the text, and isn’t just about responding to texts; it starts with the student, responding to the student, what the student wants to accomplish, what the student needs, and ultimately about teachers and students communicating with each other. (p. 76)

Our purpose here is to briefly describe a research project conducted in the Lengua Inglesa II chair at Facultad de Lenguas, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba (Argentina), that aims to explore the implementation of self-monitoring as part of an electronic feedback cycle and to report an analysis of the results obtained in 2012–2013.¹

Self-monitoring

According to Charles (1990), self-monitoring is defined as “a means of increasing the amount of dialogue over the text for those whose institutional circumstances do not permit individual editorial discussions on student drafts” (p. 288). Specifically, it involves students underlining and annotating their drafts with questions, doubts, comments, or impressions regarding those items or areas in which they would like to receive feedback from the teacher. The teacher, then, responds to this text by focusing on the annotations made by the writer. In this way, the student is the one who initiates and directs the process of feedback and subsequent revision.

Self-monitoring has been proven to help students gain autonomy over their revision process, strike a balance between text-based and surface concerns, and develop awareness on the importance of the content and organization of their texts. In a study involving EFL university students in Eastern China, Xiang (2004) discovered that training in self-monitoring was an effective way of implementing written feedback inasmuch as it led students toward becoming more critical readers of their own texts and encouraged them to be more receptive to their teacher’s feedback, as this was based on their own concerns and on the main problems they had encountered while writing. As regards improvements in the quality of their texts, it was shown that more proficient writers seemed to benefit from this technique more than less proficient student writers or low achievers, who tended to focus on surface aspects of their texts. However, in an earlier study, Cresswell (2000) pointed out that specific training involving awareness raising, modeling, and evaluation previous to the actual application of self-monitoring techniques improved students’ ability to pay attention to the content and organization of their texts. On the basis of the above-mentioned studies, we decided to explore the implementation of self-monitoring on the writing of undergraduate students of English as a foreign language.

Methodology

Three teachers and five intact groups of students of LenguaInglesa II participated in this study during 2012 and 2013. LenguaInglesa II is a course in the second year of the undergraduate programs on EFL at Facultad de Lenguas, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, in Argentina. Given the above-mentioned studies on self-monitoring (Charles, 1990; Xiang, 2004), it was necessary to provide students with appropriate training prior to the implementation of this type of student-initiated feedback. Therefore, a whole class period (80 minutes) was devoted to the introductory session, during which students were introduced to self-monitoring and the teacher provided examples with the aim of modeling the technique and showing the type and scope of the annotations that might be used (questions regarding both language and content, doubts related to the organization of the text, etc.) and how these could be inserted in the text by means of the comment function in Microsoft Word.

After becoming familiar with the basic characteristics of self-monitoring, students were given instructions for a writing assignment that was related to the topics being dealt with in class and that involved the self-monitoring technique—that is, making annotations on their texts as a way to initiate feedback. They were asked to submit their annotated texts by e-mail following a set of guidelines normally used in the course. The teachers provided feedback on the first drafts by responding to the annotations and, if necessary, by also providing feedback on other aspects of the text that they thought needed to be revised.² Finally, students handed in a second and revised version of their texts. The whole procedure (that is, training and implementation of self-monitoring) lasted approximately four weeks, a period of time quite similar to the amount necessary to carry out the regular indirect feedback process used during our annual course.

Results

In the first stage of the research project, we classified and analyzed the annotations students made on their drafts following the taxonomy proposed by Xiang (2004). Annotations were classified into three main categories: content, organization, and form (use of English). Taking into account the specific instructional context and our own pedagogical concerns, we decided to further classify annotations on form depending on whether they referred to grammar, vocabulary, expression of ideas, or mechanics (spelling and punctuation).

Of the 259 texts collected, only 88 (33.97%) had annotations; the remaining 171 texts were submitted with no annotations at all. That is, 66.02% of the students who participated in this study decided not to insert any comment, question, or doubt in their drafts. From the 88 texts that did include annotations, we collected a total number of 202 annotations. The classification of those annotations is shown in Table 1 (click to enlarge).

Fifty-six (27.72%) of the annotations were identified as annotations on content. Some examples illustrating the type of annotations found include the following: “I was not sure if this sentence is off the point,” “Does this example illustrate the previous idea?,” and “Shall I paraphrase the meaning to include the idea it represents?”

Annotations regarding organization amounted to 45, which represented 22.27% of the total number of annotations. In this category, some of the comments and/or questions presented by students include “I'm not sure this transition signal is useful for this type of essay. I try to show that first I’m going to discuss causes and then the effects” and “Is the order of ideas correct here? Or should I mention cause 1—effect one, cause 2—effect 2 for the summary?”

Half of the annotations analyzed (50%) belong to the category “use of English.” Out of 101 annotations found in this category, 34 addressed vocabulary issues and 43 focused on expression of ideas. Examples of the former include “Is this word used correctly in order to refer to the consequences?” and “Is it okay to use phrasal verbs like this in this kind of writing?” As to expression of ideas, recurrent annotations were of this sort: “Is it too informal? How could I express this better?” and “Is this a correct expression?” Of the remaining annotations, 20 were about grammar, such as "Is this correct, or should I use other Tense?,” and 4 about mechanics, such as “When I include a quote from the story, should I use contractions as in the original text?"

Final Remarks

One of the most outstanding results in this stage of the research project is the low percentage of students who actually used self-monitoring as part of the revision and feedback process. It is quite striking that, given the opportunity to initiate the feedback dialogue, more than half of the students opted not to do it. Retrospective interviews are currently being analyzed to look into the reasons underlying this tendency.

When looking at the most frequent annotations, it is interesting that a considerable percentage (50%) were on content and organization, a finding concurrent with the results of previous studies (Charles, 1990; Chen, 2009; Cresswell, 2000; Xiang, 2004). Although more research is definitely necessary, it seems that self-monitoring may be an effective technique to encourage critical reviewing of global aspects of ongoing texts, which tend to be disregarded by foreign language learners.

As regards annotations on the use of English, the most frequent doubts and/or concerns had to do with vocabulary and expression of ideas rather than with grammar or mechanics. This focus on lexical aspects of the language seems to characterize foreign language learners’ revision (Ferris, 2003), especially in academic contexts, such as the one in which this study was carried out.

To summarize, self-monitoring appears to be an interesting revision technique to promote autonomy and critical self-evaluation as well as to gear students’ attention to global aspects of their developing texts. There seem to be, however, some cultural, attitudinal, and contextual factors that prevent many students from getting involved in this type of student-initiated feedback.

Notes

1. A preliminary version of this article was presented at the I JornadasNacionales, III Jornadassobreexperiencias e Investigación en Educación a Distancia y Tecnologíaeducativa en la UNC, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, March 14–15, 2013, by M. E. Romano, J. I. Martínez, and A. de los Canavosio.

2. The type of feedback given in this instance was the same type of feedback used all throughout the academic year (explicit indirect feedback), which is a type of feedback that has proved to be effective for this specific undergraduate course. The fact that self-monitoring is complemented with teacher-initiated feedback has to do with the characteristics and objectives of this particular course and the broader institutional setting. In addition, and as proposed by Charles (1990), the main reason why self-monitoring may be accompanied by other comments from the teacher is to signal sections/areas which may cause trouble to the text’s intended audience.

References

Charles, M. (1990). Responding to problems in written English using a student self-monitoring technique. ELT Journal, 44, 286–293.

Chen, X. (2009). “Self-monitoring” feedback in English writing teaching. Research in Theoretical Linguistics, 3(12), 109–117.

Cresswell, A. (2000). Self-monitoring in student writing: Developing learner responsibility. ELT Journal, 54, 235–244.

Ferris, D. (2003). Response to student writing: Implications for second language students. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Goldstein, L. (2010). Finding “theory” in the particular: An “autobiography” of what I learned and how about teacher feedback. In T. Silva & P. K. Matsuda (Eds.), Practicing theory in second language writing (p. 72-90). West Lafayette, IN: Parlor Press.

Xiang, W. (2004). Encouraging self-monitoring in writing by Chinese students. ELT Journal, 58, 238–246.

Julia Inés Martínez is a teacher and translator of English, and holds an MA in English with a focus on Anglo-American literature. At present, she works as a full professor of Lengua Inglesa II at Facultad de Lenguas, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, in Argentina. She has participated in several research projects on EFL.