The Effect of Written Corrective Feedback on Omani Students’ Accuracy in the Use of English Prepositions

Abstract

A quasi-experimental study was conducted to examin the effectiveness of providing written corrective feedback (WCF) to Arab speakers of English on ten uses of English prepositions. Arab speakers commonly find it difficult to correctly use English propositions, mainly due to the differences between the two languages (e.g. Ortega, 2009). Examples of prepositions misuse are “married from,” “die from,” and “kind with.” The WCF implementation lasted for seven weeks. The students’ being in intact classes made random assignments to different groups difficult. The data were derived from three tests: pre-test, immediate post-test and delayed post-test as well as an open-ended questionnaire. The experimental group (n= 25) received WCF on their writing, oral meta-linguistic tutorials, and a treatment task for their pre-test. For both the immediate post-test and the delayed post-test, they only received WCF on their writings. The control group (n= 25) only received general comments, like “good organization of the story events.” The statistical results of the independent samples t-test show the experimental group outperforming the control group on the target features. The analysis of the questionnaire data also shows the benefits of WCF for improving preposition use. The results also have pedagogical implications with regard to WCF. Keywords: WCF, writing, prepositions, students’ views, Arabic, EFL