Written corrective feedback, mobile-assisted language learning utilization, and syntactic competence among Chinese sport majors

Abstract

As international sport exchanges between China and other countries are becoming more frequent, how to improve the English writing of sport students turns more important. In order to improve Chinese sport major students' English writing competence with modern techniques, written corrective feedback, mobile-assisted language learning utilization, and syntactic competence were selected in this study as research variables to analyze their important role in English writing teaching and their interrelationships. Descriptive research was used in this study.Totally 400 participants were required to complete a comprehensive questionnaire. They are four grades sport major students from three different levels of Chinese universities containing sport majors. The findings indicated that most respondents agreed with all the subscales under the variables of written corrective feedback, mobile-assisted language learning utilization, and syntactic competence. Although there was no significant difference on above three variables when grouped according to demographic variables, the three variables were highly significantly correlated with each other. By stressing the role of written corrective feedback and mobileassisted language learning utilization in cultivating sport major students' syntactic competence, a program was proposed to enhance the English writing competence of Chinese sport majors in universities, focusing on the lowest indicator in each subdomain. It also provided necessary guidance for educators, administrators and enterprises to design more suitable English writing course for sport majors with modern techniques.