Effects of Teacher-Student Conference on Paragraph Writing of EFL Students in Thailand

Teacher-student conference is one feedback technique to enhance students’ writing. This study aims to investigate the effects of teacher-student conference on paragraph writing of EFL learners and explore students’ opinions towards teacher-student conference as a feedback technique. The sample involved 23 Thai English major students taking a paragraph writing course. The research instruments consisted of pretest/posttest, writing tasks, writing rubric, the report on teacher-student conferencing, and a semi-structured interview. T-test, min, max, mean, standard deviation, and content analysis were used for data analysis. The results showed that students significantly improved their paragraph writing after teacher-student conferencing at .05 level. Students got the highest mean score in a process paragraph but the lowest mean score in a narrative paragraph. Topic sentence was the highest aspect that students improved their writing in, while verb tense was the least. Students’ opinions were found in five areas: 1) discuss strengths and weaknesses, 2) build relationships between students and teacher, 3) develop ideas on assignments, 4) plan for revision, and 5) clarify grades. The results showed that students thought the main advantage of the teacher-student conference was developing ideas, whereas clarifying grades was the least advantageous. Further studies should work on strategies to improve each type of writing so that teachers can apply each writing strategy in response to the different learning needs of students.


Introduction
In the field of foreign language learning, EFL learners often experience difficulty writing well in the target language. Many learners also struggle to write well even in their own native language [2,9]. The teaching of writing for EFL learners involves many issues such as writing instruction that does not focus on the writing process, students are careless when making corrections given by teachers, and feedback strategies that do not identify writing errors accurately [27,37]. These problems affect writing instruction and lead to minimal improvement in students' writing. Providing feedback is one of the writing processes that teachers can use to respond to students' writing. Feedback provides opportunities for students to see how others respond to their work and learn from these comments. Feedback plays a role in students' achievement and motivation as it helps students perceive their own responsibilities and thus students enhance their learning. Different types of feedback can have different effects on students' learning, so teachers should provide feedback based on students' work and present it in a way that students can understand and use [8,13,34]. Teacher-student conference is one of the most effective feedback techniques to enhance students' writing [16,24]. Teacher-student conference provides the teacher an opportunity to question the student about messages that students want to communicate via a working draft. Teacher-student conference also allows the teacher to uncover potential misunderstandings the student might have about prior written feedback or issues in writing that have been discussed in class [23,24,28]. Several studies found that teacher-student conference techniques were rated as the most beneficial to student writing improvement. This technique helped students improve their writing habits, found solutions to their writing, and gained positive attitudes toward revision skills. Teacher-student conference also enhanced the learning environment as students felt relaxed and understood more about their writing [6,26,41]. Thus, the objectives of this study are: 1) to investigate the effects of teacher-student conference on the writing ability of EFL undergraduate learners and 2) to explore students' opinions toward teacher-student conference.

Paragraph Writing
A paragraph is a group of sentences that discuss only one main idea. The number of sentences in a paragraph is not important, but it should be long enough to develop the main idea clearly. A good paragraph focuses on improving the clarity of the writing and supports the main statement with appropriate examples and details. Thus, paragraph writing is good practice for effective writing and essential for longer forms of writing which helps students build a solid foundation of writing skills [3,5,35]. A narrative paragraph tells stories about events, experiences, or situations to communicate ideas to the reader. In the narrative paragraph, the writer sets the background for an event, describes the event, and also comments on the event [5,32,38]. A process paragraph is used when giving instruction or describing how something works. To write the process paragraph effectively, the writer must make sure that each step is presented with enough details and puts the steps in a logical sequence so that the reader can follow them to complete the task or understand the process [35,39,45]. A comparison and contrast paragraph describes the qualities of subjects by discussing their similarities and differences. The subjects that are used to compare or contrast must be in the same related groups or categories. Comparison means the way which two or more subjects are alike so that the writer compares them by showing the similarities among the subjects. Contrast focuses on differences among two or more subjects so that the writer contrasts them by showing differences among the subjects [5,14,39]. A cause and effect paragraph explains relationships between an event or other events that precede or follow it. When the writer presents the cause paragraph, the writer talks about what makes an event happen and answers the question as to why something happens. When presenting the effect paragraph, the writer talks about results of a cause and answers the question highlighting what the results or outcomes of an event are [14,33,45].

Teacher-Student Conference
Teacher-student conference is one of the feedback techniques for writing instruction. The conference is considered as the most important part of a writing course [9,21,23]. The primary purpose of the teacher-student conference is to offer feedback about the draft of the students' written work to facilitate the improvement of their writing ability. The conference involves students discussing their first draft, and the teacher giving oral feedback about the student's writing [9,24,28]. The conference can be brief consultations on topics, sources, outlines, strategies for writing, or completed writing, but usually focus on a paper in progress, examining the current draft and ways of improving it [21,23,41]. The teacher-student conference reflects the concept of socio-constructivism in which the teacher and students have a closer interaction to discuss ideas and solve problems that students face in understanding the teacher's written feedback [7,22,40]. During the conference, it is important that students participate actively, asking questions, clarifying meanings of what they do not understand, and discussing ideas about their writing. The conference provides opportunities for both the teacher and students to negotiate the meaning of the writing through face-to-face interaction. As a result, the teacher-student conference can supplement the limitations of one-way written feedback [8,21,40]. The conference gives students a clearer idea of their strengths and weaknesses. The conference not only develops students' autonomy skills but also allows students to raise questions about their written feedback and helps students construct a revised plan of their writing [23,41]. Anderson [4] asserted that the teacher-student conference gives students opportunities to get informative feedback on their writing, talk about their writing, ideas, plans for future work and strategies for doing the assignment. The conference also enables shyer students who may not speak up in class to have an opportunity to ask questions or express their opinions in private during the conference. The conference helps students realize their potential because the conference allows students to generate their own ideas and solutions for their writing problems [6,29]. In addition, the conference makes students better writers and improves their habits and attitudes toward learning and revision skills. The conference gives a chance for teachers to respond to the students' writing, clarify meaning, provide specific feedback, explain writing strategies, and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of students' work [15,23,46]. The conference may have more impacts on students' writing improvement because some students don't always read comments or some just look at their grade, so the conference -the feedback given in person -helps teachers understand the students' needs and perceptions [17,30]. Several researchers stated that the conference enhances emotional and social aspects of interaction and builds relationships between the teacher and student. The teacher establishes a rapport with students to get to know their interests, ambitions, and ideas. The conference also provides a more informal and friendly atmosphere; as a result, students feel relaxed which can help them better understand the teacher's feedback [10,16,40].

Participants
The participants were 23 university students at Nakhon Ratchasima Rajabhat University who were studying a degree in Education, majoring in English and took a course on paragraph writing.

Research Instruments
The research instruments consisted of pretest/posttest, writing tasks, writing rubric, report on teacher-student conference, and semi-structured interview.

Pretest and Posttest
The pretest and posttest were designed as parallel tests which aimed to investigate the effects of the teacher-student conference on students' writing ability. The pretest was administered a week before the implementation. The topic of the pretest was "The most memorable event in your high school". The posttest was administered after the students studied four types of paragraph writing. The topic of the posttest was "The most memorable event in your family". Both the pretest and posttest required students to write a paragraph of about 180-200 words. The pretest and posttest were validated by three experts and piloted with another group of students for reliability. Overall, these three experts remarked that the questions and instruction of the pretest and posttest were clear and achievable, and the students could perform the task within the time provided.

Writing Tasks
The writing tasks were four types of paragraph: narrative, process, compare and contrast, and cause and effect, of about 180-200 words long. Each writing task consisted of three topics so that students could choose the topic they were interested in to write the paragraph. The topics of the writing tasks were validated by three experts and piloted with five students to check whether they understood the questions and the instruction or not. Overall, the responses from the experts and students showed that the questions and the instruction were clear and could be used for the writing tasks.

Writing Rubric
The paragraph writing rubric was focused on five areas: the topic sentence, supporting details, the concluding sentence, verb tense, and coherence. The writing rubric was sent to three experts for validation. Overall, the responses from the experts showed that the writing rubric was appropriate. The inter-rater and intra-rater were employed to mark the paragraph to ensure reliability. The intra-rater was the researcher. The inter-rater was an experienced English language instructor who has taught English in higher education. It was found the writing scores between the inter-rater and intra-rater were highly correlated at .828 which showed that both raters interpreted the paragraph writing criteria similarly.

Report on Teacher-Student Conference
The report on teacher-student conference was used after students received the written feedback of each paragraph writing. The report on the teacher-student conference consisted of four areas: strengths, weaknesses, questions to ask teachers, and plans to revise the work. The report on teacher-student conference was validated by three experts and piloted with five students to check whether they understood the questions and instruction or not. Overall, the responses from the experts and students showed that the questions and instruction were clear and could be used.

Semi-Structured Interview
The semi-structured interview was used to investigate the students' opinions toward the teacher-student conference. The questions for the semi-structured interview consisted of seven guided questions. After asking the guided question to the participants, the researcher asked follow-up questions to seek further details for new ideas on a particular topic. The semi-structured interview was validated by three experts and piloted with five students to check whether they understood the questions or not. Overall, the responses from the experts and students showed that the guided questions were clear and could be used for the semi-structured interview.

Data Collection
During the first week before the implementation, the students were informed of the objectives of the study and made aware that their participation in the study was voluntary and that their identity would be kept confidential. Students indicated their consent by filling in a consent form. Then, the students took the pretest. From weeks 2-14, the students studied the paragraph writing course with four writing tasks. After studying the first type of paragraph, which was narrative writing, the students were informed about how the teacher-student conference would be administered in this course. The teacher also explained the information needed in the report on teacher-student conference. Thus, the students better understood how to complete the report before conferencing with the teacher. The teacher-student conference was conducted after the teacher gave written feedback of the first draft of each writing. Before the teacher-student conference, the teacher gave written feedback on the first draft of students' writing and asked students to fill the information in the report on the teacher-student conference based on the written feedback on their draft. The teacher-student conference was a one-to-one interaction between the teacher and each student and took about 15 minutes for each student. The students took the report and the draft with them to use during the conference with the teacher. After the conference, the students had to revise their draft according to the conference with the teacher and the solutions they had come up with. On week 15, the students took the posttest, and nine students (using the simple random technique) participated in the semi-structured interview. This study was implemented once a week for about 150 minutes per week.

Data Analysis
In this study, the research instruments: pretest/posttest, writing tasks, a report on teacher-student conference, and semi-structured interview were analyzed to investigate the effects of teacher-student conference on writing ability.

Pretest and posttest
The pretest and posttest were analyzed using descriptive statistics including Mean, Min, Max, and Standard Deviation (S.D.). One sample T-test was applied to compare the pretest and posttest. The paragraph writing rubric was then used to analyze the pretest and posttest. Since the correlation between two raters was highly correlated, only the intra-rater, (the researcher), analyzed the pretest and posttest [43]. However, the researcher examined the tests several times to reflect on her ideas without coming to an immediate conclusion.

Writing tasks
The paragraph writing rubric was used to analyze the four writing tasks: narrative, process, compare and contrast, and cause and effect. Since the correlation between two raters was highly correlated, only the intra-rater, (the researcher), analyzed the four writing tasks [43]. However, the researcher examined the paragraphs several times to reflect on her ideas without coming to an immediate conclusion.

The report on teacher-student conference
The report on teacher-student conference was analyzed using content analysis. Each student had to fill in a report on the teacher-student conference four times based on the four types of paragraph writing. To analyze these reports, the data of each report was read word-by-word and line-by-line to look for units of meaning that revealed information about strengths, weaknesses, prepared questions, and plans for revision for initial coding. Then, the initial coding of the report on teacher-student conference was sorted into subcategories. Each subcategory was then integrated into a major category to conceptualize the concept [11].

Semi-structured interview
The semi-structured interview was analyzed using content analysis. The semi-structured interview was conducted with nine students. The nine students who participated in the interview were randomly selected from the sample. Before the interview, its purpose was explained to the participants. The participants were asked whether they wanted to participate in the interview and indicated their consent by filling out the consent form. During the interview, the researcher and the participant had one-to-one interaction. The interview took about 15 minutes, and audio recording was made of the entire interview for later transcriptions and data analysis. The interview was in Thai (the first language) to reduce any anxieties that the EFL/ESL learners may have experienced due to being nervous talking with the teacher in English. Using Thai helped create a closer interaction and smoother communication between the teacher and students as students could express themselves freely and develop more meaningful negotiations in the writing conference. To analyze the semi-structured interview, the transcriptions of the interview were read word-by-word and line-by-line to look for units of meaning that revealed information about advantages and disadvantages of the teacher-student conference for initial coding. Then, the initial coding of the semi-structured interviews was sorted into subcategories. Each subcategory was then integrated into a major category to conceptualize the concept [11].

Results
The results are presented in two parts regarding the two research objectives: 1) to investigate the effects of the teacher-student conference to enhance the writing ability of EFL undergraduate learners, and 2) to explore students' opinions toward the teacher-student conference.

The Effects of Teacher-Student Conference on Writing Ability of EFL Undergraduate Learners
The effects of teacher-student conference on writing ability were presented in three aspects: 1) the scores of pre-test and post-test, 2) the scores of writing tasks before and after the teacher-student conference, and 3) the analysis of writing tasks before and after the teacher-student conference.  Table 1 shows the scores of Min, Max, Mean, and S.D. of the pretest and posttest. It was found that the pretest got the lowest score at 7 points and the highest score at 11 points (out of 15), whereas the posttest got the lowest score at 9 points and the highest score at 14 points. The mean score of the posttest (11.83) was higher than that of the pretest (9.04). The S.D. score of the posttest (1.527) was higher than that of the pretest (1.261) which indicated that the writing ability of students had a wide range. Overall, the results of the pretest and posttest showed that after the implementation of the teacher-student conference, the students improved their writing ability significantly. Table 2 presents the scores of writing tasks before and after the teacher-student conference. The writing tasks included narrative, process, compare and contrast, and cause and effect. The results showed that before the teacher-student conference the mean scores of each writing task were quite similar. The lowest mean score was narrative writing (6.26), while the highest mean score was process writing (6.96). On the other hand, after the teacher-student conference, the students' writing ability showed improvement. The lowest mean score was narrative writing (8. 74), whereas the highest mean score was process writing (11.13). It was found that narrative writing had the lowest mean score both before and after the teacher-students conference compared to the other types of writing task. Table 3 shows the analysis of writing tasks before and after the teacher-student conference. It was found that the topic sentence was the criteria in which students showed the most improvement, whereas verb tense was the criteria that students showed the least. In terms of the topic sentence, the results showed that the topic sentence in process writing was the criteria that students improved the most, while that of compare and contrast writing was the least. In terms of verb tense, the results showed that verb tense in process writing was the criteria that students improved the most, whereas that of narrative writing was the least. Overall, process writing was the writing task that students showed the most improvement, while narrative writing was the writing task that students improved the least.

The Students' Opinions toward Teacher-Student Conference
The students' opinions toward the teacher-student conference were divided into five aspects: 1) develop ideas on assignments, 2) discuss strengths and weaknesses, 3) plans for revision, 4) build relationships, and 5) clarify grades.  Table 4 shows that the majority of students (30.6 percent) thought that the teacher-student conference helped them develop ideas on their first draft. About 26.5 percent of students thought that the teacher-student conference helped them discuss ideas about their strengths and weaknesses. About 22.5 percent of students thought that the teacher-student conference helped them plan for revision. Only 8.2 percent of students thought that the teacher-student conference helped them clarify grades. Overall, developing ideas on assignments was thought to be the main advantage, whereas, clarifying grades was thought to be the least advantageous aspect of the teacher-student conference.

Develop Ideas on Assignments
The results showed that students sometimes forgot what they had learned, or they did not understand correctly in class. When they practiced writing, they did not know how to arrange each writing step into a whole paragraph. The conference helped students clarify writing details they did not understand well or got confused with. During the conference, students prepared questions about what they wanted to clarify with the teacher and then got immediate suggestions for those points. As a result, students could use these suggestions or feedback from the teacher to revise their draft.

Discuss Strengths and Weaknesses
In terms of the strengths of writing a paragraph, the results showed that students were likely to write the topic sentence accurately following the intervention. After brainstorming ideas, the students had determined the major points of the topic they wanted to write, which they then included in the topic sentence. According to the weaknesses, the results showed that the students tended to use verb tenses incorrectly, write incomplete sentences, forget articles, capital letters and punctuation, and did not have the correct subject verb agreement.

Plan for Revision
The results showed that after the conference, students had a better grasp of how to use correct verb tense and appropriate vocabulary to suit context. Some students mentioned that they had strategies on how to manage time for writing each part of the paragraph, which is useful for the time constraints of examinations.

Build Relationships
The results showed that the teacher-student conference enabled students to have more interaction with the teacher. Some students said that the conference showed how the teacher gives attention to students which helped them to have a greater awareness of their own writing ability.

Clarify Grades
The results showed that the teacher-student conference helped students clarify their grades. Students mentioned that they knew the score they achieved from their first draft. As a result, students could ask the teacher to clarify their strengths and weaknesses according to the score in order to focus upon the improvements needed in their writing.

Discussion
The results showed that teacher-student conference had positive effects on students' writing ability and students' opinions. These results corresponded with those of [6,12,30,40,46] that the teacher-student conference is one of the most effective techniques in providing feedback that can help strengthen writing ability.

Effects on Writing Ability
The results showed that after the teacher-student conference, students improved their writing significantly. The results also supported the study of [7, 18,] that teacher-student conference was effective in learning writing. This study found that teacher-student conference helped students clarify suggestions from written feedback which students had problems with. The results of this study were in line with those of [1,26,42] that students had a negative impression of the teacher's written feedback as this feedback was often confusing and overwhelming which led students to feel frustrated and unsure after reading the comments. As a result, the teacher-student conference helped students improve their writing ability in terms of content and conventions.

Content
The results revealed that the teacher-student conference helped students get ideas about how to revise and improve the topic sentence, supporting ideas, and the concluding sentence of their first draft. Following the teacher-student conference, many students had more ideas about how to develop the topic sentence (15.6%), supporting details (14.7%), and the concluding sentence (16.5%). Some students said that they understood when they were in class, but when they practiced writing at home, everything seemed to become confused. Therefore, during the conference, students asked the teacher to help them better understand ideas of writing such as how to write a good topic sentence, how to provide examples when giving details, and how to summarize or restate the conclusion. These results corresponded with those of [29,30] that teacher-student conference helped students to have ideas about how to improve or revise content and structure as well as writing strategies of the first draft. However, the study of [20] showed that teacher-student conference did not significantly improve students' essay structure in terms of content and organization. The study of [25] revealed that students tended to have a possibility of positive tendency in having better revision in writing which corresponded with the results of this study.

Conventions
The results described that the teacher-student conference improved students' verb tense and coherence in their writing. These results were in line with those of [2,20,34] that teacher-student conference was an effective technique to help EFL learners to improve language use in writing. The results of this study showed that students were most concerned about verb tense and coherence. The results of the four writing tasks revealed that students got the lowest scores in verb tense compared to the other criteria. Moreover, almost half of the students felt that verb tense was their weakest area in writing, and planned to revise verb tense for their first draft. During the conference, students asked questions about verb tense such as: How to improve my grammar? How to use the correct grammar? Many students mentioned that coherence was their weakness because they did not know how to arrange ideas and use suitable words in the context of their writing. Students asked questions about word uses such as How to use proper words in context? Which word is more suitable? The results of this study supported the study of [37,46] that EFL/ESL students expected the teacher to correct their grammar errors and the use of vocabulary at the conference. After revision, the results showed the improvement of students' writing scores in terms of verb tense and coherence. That means the teacher-student conference provided ideas about how to improve their language use in writing. These results corresponded with those of [12,20] that the teacher-student conference significantly improved grammar and vocabulary. The study of [25] revealed that the majority of students made statistically significant reductions in subject-verb agreement errors and run-on sentences; however, it was suggested that the conference should focus on a major problem so that students can identify their main weaknesses and are able to highlight their errors.

Effects on Students' Opinions
The findings showed that the teacher-student conference gave benefits in the areas of academic aspect (discuss strengths and weaknesses, develop ideas on assignments, plan for revision, and clarify grades) and social aspect (build relationships).

Academic Aspect
The findings revealed that the teacher-student conference gave academic benefits in terms of discussing strengths and weaknesses, developing ideas on assignments, planning for revision, and clarifying grades. The results showed that the teacher-student conference helped to improve students' writing ability. The teacher-student conference gave students details about their strengths and weaknesses, students had more ideas about improving their first draft, raised questions on the teacher's written feedback, clarified what they did not understand, and planned for their writing revision. These results corresponded with those of [7,30] that the teacher-student conference provided opportunities for students to work against the idea of learning as passively memorizing materials because students had to reflect on their writing for improvement, interacted with their own text to develop ideas about their writing, and negotiated the meaning of their writing through the face-to-face conversation with the teacher. In addition, the results showed that the teacher-student conference provided an opportunity for shyer students who felt discouraged to articulate ideas in class. These results support the study of [46] that the conference helped shyer students who did not want to speak up in class by giving them an opportunity to ask questions or express their opinions in private during conferences. However, the results showed that some students did not negotiate the meaning of their writing. They just focused on the surface level such as verb tense and vocabulary. Some students asked the teacher how to revise the draft or which strategies could help them write better which corresponded with those [1,41] that students expected the teacher to tell them how to revise their first draft, and discuss their individual writing problems, and provide directions, explicit suggestions, detailed explanations, immediate answers to writing problems, and a secret technique for better writing. Moreover, the results revealed that some students preferred to discuss grades during the conference such as: How to get a better mark? How to get an A for this course? These results corresponded with those of [13] that students wanted to know how to receive a good grade after revising their draft, so they could follow the teacher's style and write according to the teacher's expectation.

Social Aspect
The findings showed that the teacher-student conference enhanced the social aspect of interaction and built relationships between the teacher and students. The results corresponded with those of [12,19] that the teacher-student conference provided an informal atmosphere, forged connections, and built positive affective experiences between the teacher and students which created meaningful relationships and established good interaction between teacher and students. The results revealed that the teacher-student conference helped reduce the gap between the teacher and students and made students feel that the teacher gave more attention to the class and students. These results supported the study of [40,46] that teacher-student conference offered a close personal relationship and provided one-to-one discussion between the teacher and students which helped establish good interaction in the conference. Some students felt more comfortable, safer, and less nervous when talking with the teacher privately which helped create a relaxing atmosphere.

Conclusion
This study aims to enhance students' writing ability according to the concept of teacher-student conference technique. Based on the analysis results, the teacher-student conference provided advantages for both teachers and students in terms of academic and social aspects. The results consider that the teacher-student conference is effective in Thailand, where students use English as a foreign language. In the Thai context, when the teacher gave written feedback in English, students often misinterpreted the written feedback. Using the teacher-student conference in which students have to discuss ideas about their writing using their first language (Thai) helps support the written feedback and enhance students' writing ability in a positive way.

Limitations of the Study
Since the teacher-student conference was time consuming, the time for consultations in class was found to be insufficient. Although the allotted time for each conference was set at 15 minutes per student, some students asked for more clarification. As a result, the teacher had to make additional appointments with some students after the class.

Pedagogical Implications
The teacher's writing feedback could help students improve their writing [23,41]; however, the results of this study showed that students preferred the conference than written feedback. Even though the study of [18] showed that there was no significant difference between oral feedback, written feedback, and the combination of oral and written feedback, this study revealed that the teacher-student conference gave students more ideas to improve their writing as it enhanced the knowledge in both academic and social aspects. As a result, the findings of this study suggest that teachers who teach writing should apply the teacher-student conference as a feedback strategy to help improve both students' writing and students' attitudes toward writing.

Recommendations for Further Study
Based on the research findings, it is recommended that further studies examine how students use strategies for each type of writing to help improve their work. To understand how students use different strategies to improve different types of writing could help teachers apply these techniques in writing classes. In addition, students use many different writing strategies, so with the knowledge of these, teachers could apply each writing strategy in response to the different learning styles of each student.