Effects of Error Correction-Prompted Revision on Learning L2 Grammatical Structures of Different Complexities

Abstract

The study compares the effects of revision undertaken after written corrective feedback (CF) on learning two grammatical structures that differ in complexity: the articles and the hypothetical conditional. In an experiment designed for this purpose, ninety EFL college learners comprised one control and four experimental groups that were distinguished by the target structure of written CF they received and whether to carry out revision. The participants engaged in four dictogloss tasks to produce written texts. The first, second, and fourth dicotogloss writings were used as the pretest, the immediate posttest, and the delayed posttest, respectively. Learners’ knowledge of the grammatical structures was measured by calculating the accuracy of using them in their writing. The results indicated that revision enhanced knowledge of the articles in the short term while it did not increase that of the hypothetical conditional. The findings suggest that the efficacy of revision on learning a particular structure is mediated by its grammatical complexity.