Efficacy of Three Different kinds of Error Feedback on EFL Students’ Writing in China

Abstract

Feedback is very important for learners to improve their writing but providing effective feedback is not an easy job for the teachers who teach English writing. This is particularly true in tertiary education in Chinese context. Teacher’s explicit feedback (TEF), implicit feedback (TIF) and the guided peer review (GPR) are three types of feedback commonly used by English teachers in the EFL writing classes in China. This paper aims to examine the effects of these three different types of feedback on college students’ writings in Chinese context by using a pretest and posttest treatment, questionnaires and a case study. The qualitative results reveal that the three types of feedback are all valued by students and do help to improve their writing. GPR and TIF are preferred mostly by advanced learners but GPR triggers more self-initiated revisions and more unsuccessful revisions are found in the TIF class. TEF is mostly favored by students with lower language abilities and more successful revisions are reported in this class. These findings are consistent with the results of the pretest and posttest from the three classes. The quantitative data show that GPR contributes the highest mean score to students’ writing, and TEF the second while TIF the last. The implications of these findings are also discussed.