The Use of Grice's Maxims in Providing Content-Feedback for the Student Writers of An-Najah National University

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of providing content-feedback by utilizing Grice's Maxims on the writing performance of the students of writing of An —Najah National University, and their attitudes towards this kind of feedback. This study attempted to answer the following questions: 1. Is there any significant difference in the writing performance of the student writers who are provided with content-feedback between the pre¬test and the post-test? 2. Is there any significant difference in the writing performance of the student writers who are provided with form-feedback between the pre¬test and the post-test? 3. What are the attitudes of the students who are provided with content-feedback towards such feedback? To achieve the objectives of the study, the researcher conducted an experimental study on a sample consisting of students from An-Najah National University. A questionnaire was distributed among the students of the experimental group to investigate their attitudes towards content-feedback. For the data analysis, the researcher used Independent T-Test, Paired T-Test, T-Test, and Repeated MANOVA by using Wilk's Lambda. The study yielded the following results: • Providing content-feedback by utilizing Grice's Maxims had a positive effect on the performance of the student writers at the part of coherence, while it had no effect on the improvement of the use of mechanics in writing. • Student writers have positive attitudes towards content-feedback by utilizing Grice's Maxims. Finally, depending on these results the researcher recommended the following: 1. Teachers are advised to provide their students with content-feedback by utilizing Grice' Maxims in order to help them revise their ideas and the intended message they want to convey to their readers. 2. Teachers are advised not to grade the preliminary draft written by the students because, when the students receive their papers graded, they will not pay attention to the comments written on them. This in turn will not help them revise their ideas. 3. Researchers are recommended to conduct studies on the use of Grice's Maxims as a tool for providing content-feedback to students' writing by using different samples.