Effects of students’ engagement with direct and indirect corrective feedback on text rewriting

Abstract

The identification of the most effective corrective technique is a matter of debate and the results of the studies comparing direct feedback (when students are given the correction) and indirect feedback (when they have to find it on their own) are mixed. Apart from this, the effectiveness of feedback might be influenced by the way students process it. Our study compares the effects of these two kinds of feedback on text rewriting and assesses the impact of students’ engagement during feedback processing. It was conducted on twenty-six Italian FL learners at a high school in Bordeaux. Students were divided into three groups (direct feedback, indirect feedback and control group), and they performed two writing tasks. After receiving the corrections, they revised and rewrote their texts. The experimental groups outperformed the control group. An extensive engagement in feedback processing, generally promoted by indirect feedback, led to better results in text rewriting.