The Effects of Focused and Unfocused Written Corrective Feedback on Grammatical Accuracy of Iranian EFL Learners

Abstract

This study aimed at investigating whether direct focused corrective feedback and direct unfocused corrective feedback caused any differential effects on the accurate use of English articles by EFL learners across two different proficiency levels (low and high). The participants were divided into low and high proficiency levels by administering a TOEFL test. Then, sixty learners in each proficiency level formed two experimental groups and one control group, 20 learners in each group. One experimental group received focused written corrective feedback and the other experimental group received unfocused written corrective feedback. The statistical analysis indicated that focused group did better than both unfocused and control groups in terms of accurate use of English articles in both proficiency levels. Therefore, these results suggested that unfocused corrective feedback is of limited pedagogical value, whereas focused corrective feedback promoted learners' grammatical accuracy in L2 writing more effectively.