A preliminary investigation into student writers’ perception of corrective feedback focus

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether second language student writers’ perception or lack of perception of targeted error type influences corrective feedback effectiveness. The targeted linguistic error type in this study involved subject-verb agreement errors. Thirty-six college students from northern Taiwan were assigned into one control group without receiving error correction, one experimental group receiving error correction without perceiving the targeted error type, and another experimental group receiving error correction and perceiving the targeted error type. The results showed that when student writers received corrections and perceived the subject-verb agreement errors as the targeted error type, they made more improvements than those who received corrections but did not perceive the targeted error type in immediate posttests. Furthermore, the learning benefit of student writers’ perception of corrective feedback focus was retained in delayed posttests. Student writers who received the corrections and perceived the targeted error type of subject-verb agreement errors significantly outperformed not only those who received corrections but did not perceive the targeted error type but also those who did not receive corrections in terms of learning gains in delayed posttests. Implications for the present study for the written corrective feedback research community were discussed.