Abstract
This study examines whether indirect written corrective feedback (CF) can enable 45 ESL writers with intermediate language proficiency to self-edit word choice errors classified as conceptual. Using a pre- and immediate post-test design, the study compares the effects of indirect CF under two conditions: errors are marked and coded without (1) and with metalinguistic explanation and (2) with two types of metalinguistic explanation: traditional and cognitive. Accuracy of word choice is measured in a new piece of writing. The results indicate that (1) CF with metalinguistic explanation is more useful than that without explanation (the control group) and (2) cognitive explanation (the cognitive group) appears to be significantly more effective than one drawn on the traditional account of language (the traditional group). The findings suggest that, when the CF attends to word choice errors as conceptual by addressing the mismatch between L2 forms and their conceptual content structured through cognitive frames and conceptual metaphors, ESL student writers are likely to make correct assumptions about syntagmatic connections of L2 words and correct more erroneous words in their L2 writing than when they are exposed to the feedback that approaches word choice errors as simply lexical and focuses on form-form mismatches.
Highlights
The intense debate about whether corrective feedback (CF) facilitates student accuracy in writing continues to stay on the research agenda in second language (L2) writing, even as researchers and educators have become more interested in issues surrounding the pedagogical techniques language instructors and L2 writers find more effective
The findings suggest that, when the CF attends to word choice errors as conceptual by addressing the mismatch between L2 forms and their conceptual content structured through cognitive frames and conceptual metaphors, ESL student writers are likely to make correct assumptions about syntagmatic connections of L2 words and correct more erroneous words in their L2 writing than when they are exposed to the feedback that approaches word choice errors as lexical and focuses on form-form mismatches
The effort has been made to illustrate to ESL writing practitioners that, rather than being classified as untreatable, word choice errors can be viewed as treatable when they are approached as conceptual errors stemming from divergences between L1 and L2 conceptual structures, cognitive frames and conceptual metaphors
Summary
The intense debate about whether corrective feedback (CF) facilitates student accuracy in writing continues to stay on the research agenda in second language (L2) writing, even as researchers and educators have become more interested in issues surrounding the pedagogical techniques language instructors and L2 writers find more effective. Despite covering a broad range of CF types, the studies on focused feedback mostly center on the errors that Ferris (1999) labels as “treatable,” e.g. the use of the English article system (Bitchener & Knoch, 2010; Sheen, 2010), subject-verb agreement (Ferris et al, 2013), verb tense, and the use of prepositions in their non-idiosyncratic (non-metaphorical) meaning (Bitchener et al, 2005) Due to their discrete and rule-governed nature, instructors can direct learners to a particular set of rules to resolve treatable errors Another reason might stem from the “idiosyncratic” and “idiomatic” nature of untreatable errors (Ferris, 1999, p. 6), which possibly makes them, to a certain extent, unmanageable for language instructors to articulate an effective
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