Effects of Error Feedback of Japanese EFL learners

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of error feedback on writing tasks of Japanese EFL learners. The fifty one junior high school students are divided into two groups, depending on the types of feedback; direct feedback such as undelining a word and providing a written tip and indirect feedback such as placing a question mark alongside a confusing phrase or structure. Those settings are adopted from Hendrickson(1980). The pre- and post- tests are analyzed by comparing the number of errors in each feedback type. We prepared mainly three research questions in this study: 1) Whether or not the group given direct feedback becomes more accuracy-oriented than the group given indirect feedback. 2) Whether or not direct feedback becomes more effective to the lower level students than the upper level students. 3) Whether or not indirect feedback becomes more effective to the upper level students than the lower level students. The results indicate that there was significant difference between direct feedback group and indirect feedback group in the revision. The efficacy of the error feedback also showed significant difference between the upper level students and the lower level students. These results lead to the conclusion that error feedback from their teachers has influence on students' own revising.