A systematic review of written corrective feedback research in ESL/EFL contexts

Abstract

In the past decade (2007–2017), research on written corrective feedback (WCF) has been proliferating in English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) and English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) contexts, and new developments in this field of research are evident. To synthesize the latest advancement in WCF research, a systematic review of recent literature on WCF was conducted to identify current research trends and provide an agenda for future WCF studies. This study was conducted following the seven stages of systematic review suggested by Petticrew and Roberts (2008). In this article, content analysis was conducted on abstracts of 41 WCF primary studies published between 1997 and 2017 in SSCI indexed journals in the fields of TESOL, language learning, and technology and education using a text-mining tool called Leximancer. Twenty-two word-level concepts were identified, which were grouped into five themes: types of WCF, types of writing tasks, demographics of participants, research design/methods, and types of errors. Based on the systematic review, two research tasks are identified to provide an agenda for future research.