Written Corrective Feedback (WCF) preferences in a writing class

Written corrective feedback (WCF) research has extensively examined the effectiveness of direct versus indirect feedback approaches, yet findings remain inconsistent regarding their relative impact on complex grammatical structures. The acquisition of past counterfactual conditionals presents particular challenges for second language learners due to their syntactic and semantic complexity, with limited research investigating feedback effectiveness for this structure. This gap limits theoretical understanding of how different feedback types engage cognitive processing mechanisms during the acquisition of linguistically complex features. This quasi-experimental study investigated the differential effects of direct and indirect WCF on Turkish EFL learners' acquisition of English past counterfactual conditionals. Ninety-four first-year university students were randomly assigned to three groups: Direct WCF (n=32), Indirect WCF (n=32), and Control (n=30). Using a pretest-posttest design with immediate and delayed posttests, participants completed reconstruction tasks over an eight-week period. The Direct WCF group received explicit corrections with correct forms provided above errors, while the Indirect WCF group received metalinguistic clues requiring self-correction. Results showed that direct WCF demonstrated superior immediate effectiveness, but this advantage diminished at delayed posttest, where both treatment groups performed comparably while significantly outperforming the control group. The findings indicate that direct feedback facilitates immediate accuracy improvement in complex grammatical structures, while both feedback types achieve equivalent long-term effectiveness. These results support instructional approaches that employ direct feedback when immediate accuracy is prioritized and suggest that both feedback types engage cognitive processing mechanisms that support sustained learning of complex grammatical features.

Written corrective feedback (WCF) is widely used to point students to the grammatical errors in their written work and help reduce them.This paper reports a quasi-experimental study that compared the effectiveness of direct and indirect teacher WCF in a Thai context.One hundred and twenty Thai students at two public universities in southern Thailand were assigned to write argumentative essays within a treatment period; each treatment had 60 students.The feedback was given by four ESL/EFL lecturers at the two universities.Grammatical aspects focused on were tenses, subject-verb agreement, articles, singular/plural nouns, prepositions and adjectives/adverbs.Means for the number of errors were obtained at three points, namely, pretest, immediate posttest and delayed posttest.The findings revealed that time and WCF type as main effects showed differentiated results on all six grammatical aspects.Interaction effects between time and WCF were found for tenses and subject-verb agreement.For between-subjects effects, indirect WCF was more effective than direct WCF.For within-subjects effects, generally the differences in the mean values were significant between pretest and delayed posttest, but not between pretest and immediate posttest.These findings have implications for writing instruction and research in an ESL/EFL tertiary context.

Written corrective feedback (WCF) is widely used among writing teachers in attempt to improve students’ language accuracy in their written tasks. Experts of second language (L2) writing stated that WCF plays a significant role in language accuracy development because it is related to the development and improvement of students’ accuracy in second language writing. Corrective feedback can be grouped into direct WCF and indirect WCF. However, results in many past empirical studies were inconclusive because of variation in how the effectiveness of WCF was measured. Additionally, there is a lack of investigation pertaining to the students’ perceptions toward the feedback they received, which may reveal important factors that influence the students’ reception of the feedback that resulted in performance changes. Hence, the purpose of this study is to explore factors that contributed to the accurate use of the past tenses resulting from direct WCF and indirect WCF. Interviews were conducted with 12 students and the qualitative findings revealed the following factors: 1) learner attitudes towards feedback provided, 2) learner beliefs towards what corrections entailed, and 3) types of scaffolding. Additionally, the findings revealed the importance of teacher-student conference, the need for students to be trained over a longer period of time in relation to the use of error codes and the need for instructor to understand and implement direct and indirect feedback accordingly in their teaching. Keywords: written corrective feedback; second language acquisition; direct-indirect feedback; past tenses; mixed methods

The primary aim of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of direct and indirect written corrective feedback (WCF) on English collocational competency of high-performing ESL learners. The study also sought to compare possible differences in the effect of two WCF strategies that help the researcher in identifying the appropriate WCF strategy in improving learners’ collocational competency in the context of the study. Additionally, retention effect of WCF is also investigated in delayed post-tests. Eighty-eight high-performing ESL learners of a public university participated in the quasi-experimental study of two experimental groups and one control group. A series of test namely pre-test, immediate post-test and delayed post-test was administered to collect the data. The groups are labelled ‘Direct group’ that received direct WCF treatment (n=33), ‘Indirect group’ that received indirect WCF (n=25), and ‘Control group’ that received no treatment (n=25). A set of collocation test that was developed by Gyllstad (2009) was adopted and a pilot test was conducted prior to the actual study. The participants were tested in three point of time (pre-test, immediate post-test, and delayed post-test). The findings indicate that there is a positive effect of direct and indirect WCF strategies on collocational competence. Furthermore, direct WCF has the most effect in improving collocational competency of the participants. Finally, both WCF strategies are proven statistically in retaining their effects as demonstrated in the results of delayed post-test. Suggestion for future studies are also discussed.

Previous research mainly shows students’ improvement of composition benefits from Written Corrective Feedback (WCF). According to the five types of WCF mentioned by Ellis, containing direct WCF, indirect WCF, metalinguistic WCF, focused and unfocused WCF and reformulation, the paper reviews previous literature to help teachers adjust their WCF method to students’ preferences. The paper’s main findings are: 1) teachers’ preference for WCF is inconsistent with students’ preferences; 2) students prefer detailed and explicit feedback such as direct WCF; 3) teachers prefer indirect WCF to encourage students to reflect on their mistakes. This paper contributes to improving the teaching method of WCF.

This paper describes an opportunity for theoretical linguists to make a particular sort of contribution to the teaching of second-language (L2) grammar. Currently, a popular procedure in L2 instruction for teaching grammar is indirect Written Corrective Feedback (WCF). In this procedure, instructors do not provide corrections but rather merely flag L2 students’ errors with proofreading symbols. These symbols are intended to guide learners to self-correct errors, and it is hoped that through this process, learners might make fewer errors in future writing with these points of grammar. Despite its widespread use, there is evidence that indirect WCF only leads to increased competence for a limited subset of grammatical patterns, exerting no significant positive effect with points of grammar not in this subset. A plausible explanation in such cases is that indirect WCF can fail to provide learners with sufficient feedback to acquire the grammatical paradigm. In such cases, direct WCF may be more helpful, but there is another option, which is to supplement indirect or direct WCF with metalinguistic explanation (ME) of targeted grammatical structures. However, the exact nature of this ME could be critical. As the view of language acquisition depicted under Skill Acquisition Theory (SAT) would predict, learners would specifically require ME that consists of accurate and concisely formulated declarative knowledge of the grammar point in a format that permits the pattern to be proceduralized and eventually automatized. Since formulating concise, accurate, and proceduralizable declarative knowledge for grammar points is a challenge in and of itself, theoretical linguists could pursue this objective and thus helpfully make a particular contribution to L2 grammar instruction. Addressing learner errors involving the articles in English is discussed as an example.

This study was aimed to find out the types of Written Corrective Feedback (WCF) given by the English teacher to the students’ writings, the reason of the teacher in giving certain types of WCF, and the contributions of the WCF for the students. This study employed a case study design which involved one English teacher and three students from different acquisition levels. The data were obtained from documentation and interview. The types of WCF given by the teacher were classified by using the theory from Ellis (2008). The data from the interview were analyzed by using thematic analysis proposed by Braun and Clarke (2006). The results showed that the teacher used Direct WCF, Unfocused WCF, and Electronic Feedback in correcting the students’ errors. It was found that the teacher gave those types of WCF in order to make the students understand about the mistakes that they made in their writings. It was also found that high and medium achieving students stated that WCF from their teacher were beneficial for them in order to avoid the same mistakes in the future while low achieving student did not get the benefit of feedback.

Written corrective feedback (WCF) in enhancing writing proficiency has been the subject of numerous studies, but few studies have examined students' perceptions about the value of feedback on their written errors. This study aims to investigate the effects of direct WCF, indirect WCF, and metalinguistic explanation on the past simple tense acquisition of senior high school learners in Pakistan. Much research has been conducted involving adults, while little has been done to consider senior high school students in this regard. This study has been aimed to explore the effects of direct WCF, indirect WCF and metalinguistic explanation on the writing performance of senior high school students in Pakistan. Students were divided into four groups, each with one type of feedback, including group four as the control group with no feedback. All four groups had written narration on a given picture and were treated by mentioned feedback. After that, results were compared to look for effective feedback type. After writing task, a survey and interview were conducted to explore students’ perceptions about WCF and WCF strategies. The study found that learners want feedback from their teachers and prefer direct feedback and Metalinguistic explanation. This research has been planned to help learners in their early stage through WCF learn a second language and form a strong linguistic base that will help them construct grammatically correct sentences and compositions.

In writing classes, teachers implement Written Corrective Feedback (WCF) as a form of Corrective Feedback (CF). It is an instructional strategy teachers used in the classroom to improve L2 students' writing skills. Nevertheless, the incongruity between the preferences of students and the instructional strategies employed by teachers for WCF has resulted in challenges for teachers and perplexity for the students. The study aims to achieve the following objectives: 1) to examine the forms of CF used by L2 teachers when assessing students' writing, 2) to explore the types of CF that students prefer when receiving feedback on their writing, and 3) to determine whether the teachers' WCF practices align with the students' preferences. The researchers employed the Feedback Scale to gather data for the study. Additionally, purposive opportunistic sampling was utilised in selecting the study’s participants. The findings show that the L2 teachers provide more indirect WCF and focused WCF, whereas the L2 students prefer direct WCF and unfocused WCF. This demonstrates the concept of a disparity between the pedagogical approaches that teachers employ and the preferences that students have expressed regarding WCF. The study has implications on the writing instruction of English Language writing class.

This study is an examination of the effect of the different degrees of explicitness of written corrective feedback (WCF) on implicit and explicit knowledge of the target structure (past simple tense) in the short term and long term. There were four experimental groups including a control group, in this quasi-experimental study which received different degrees of explicit WCF. This study sought to investigate whether or not written corrective feedback could also be effective in targeting the problematic error category in the texts of FL writers. Past simple test was known as the problematic structure based on the result of the pre-test, though their level of proficiency was intermediate. It was found that both metalinguistic and direct WCF could affect the participants’ explicit knowledge of the past simple tense in the short term and long term; the indirect WCF on the other hand, could only affect the explicit knowledge in the short term and the reformulation was the only kind of WCF that did not have any effect on the explicit knowledge of the past simple tense. Moreover, all the experimental groups’ implicit knowledge improved in the short term; however, this improvement was sustained in the long term for the metalinguistic and indirect groups only. Journal of NELTA, Vol. 21, No. 1-2, 2016, Page:74-85

The exploratory study investigated the effectiveness of a new tool referred to as the error correction log (ECL). It was designed from a cognitive SLA perspective to facilitate learning, in the context of this study, of grammatical structures, following the receipt of written corrective feedback (WCF). The uniqueness of the ECL is that it guides learners through the cognitive processes deemed to underlie acquisition of grammatical structures, namely, noticing-the-gap (Schmidt & Frota, 1986), noticing (Schmidt, 1990, 2001) and noticing with metalinguistic understanding (Leow, 1997; Schmidt, 2001), and in the process potentially change the type of WCF available to learners. As the ECL was designed by the author, no study has investigated its effectiveness against a more established means of attending to WCF. In the case of the study presented here, the ECL was compared against studying WCF for a period of time. Utilizing a quasi-experimental design (a pre-test, treatment, immediate post-test, and delayed post-test), the treatment was a focused direct WCF plus ECL group versus a focused direct WCF plus study group. A control group received no WCF. The tests were three writing tasks; the target structure was regular past tense verbs. While the ECL group improved over time, the study group and the control group did not. The ECL group outperformed the control group in the delayed post-test, whereas the study group did not. An analysis of whether the corrected past tense verbs were subsequently used or not used in the post-tests demonstrated a lack of correct use for the ECL group; this, with an analysis of the ECLs for the provision of a metalinguistic explanation, suggest learners may have been able to change direct WCF (potential noticing) to direct WCF plus metalinguistic explanation (potential noticing plus metalinguistic understanding) leading to the suggestion these learners likely drew on the corrected verbs, their preexisting vocabulary-learned knowledge and preexisting metalinguistic knowledge (implicitly and explicitly acquired) when completing the delayed post-test. These results will be discussed in relation to research, theory and practice.

This study was carried out based on the hottest issue regarding the role of direct and indirect written corrective feedback (WCF). The role and use of direct WCF and indirect WCF have been debated issues among second language acquisition and writing researchers. The controversial issue regarding the necessity of feedback started from Truscott’s comment that direct written corrective feedback does not improve students’ writing skills. This research explored the students’ perception of direct WCF and indirect indirect WCF. Qualitative descriptive was applied in this research involving 30 students as the subject. A questionnaire and interview were carried out as the instruments in collecting data. An interactive model that included data collecting, coding, data display, and conclusion or verification was employed for the data analysis. The findings suggested that direct written corrective feedback had a beneficial impact because 99.91% of students said they preferred it.

Error correction is probably the most widely used technique for responding to students’ writing. Although many studies have attempted to investigate the efficacy of providing error correction through different types of written corrective feedback (WCF), there has been relatively little research on any one new approach to writing pedagogy in foreign language learning which is called dynamic WCF. The purpose of the current research was to test the effect of WCF on the improvement of writing abilities of EFL learners. Two groups of EFL students who were learning English as a foreign language participated in this study. Both groups (A and B) were given treatments. Core components of the treatment included having the students to write a composition every session (twice a week) and the teacher providing the students with feedbacks (dynamic WCF or direct WCF) on their writing tasks. Group A (n=24) was instructed through dynamic WCF because it was intended to improve L2 writing ability in general by raising linguistic awareness of learners through the error corrections performed by the teacher. On the other hand, group B (n= 22) received direct WCF on their writings. Four essential characteristics were taken into consideration for the error correction, i.e. feedback needed to be manageable, meaningful, timely and constant. The data obtained for Group A and Group B was analyzed using paired sample test and the results indicated that both groups had improved on their writing abilities. Also, administrating an independent sample T-test the findings revealed that Group A which received dynamic WCF could outperform Group B.

This study investigates how different ways of receiving peer written corrective feedback (WCF) affect learners’ opportunities to actively engage in negotiation of form in tandem virtual encounters. Two types of WCF are compared, namely direct WCF plus oral metalinguistic explanation and indirect WCF plus oral prompt. During a telecollaboration programme between Italian students of English and US students of Italian, the participants (n = 16) were given several tasks to complete in dyads, including that of providing feedback on written compositions produced by their partner in the target language. The eight dyads were divided into two groups which received the same instructions for the activities, with the exception of instructions on how to provide WCF to their partner. The data of six dyads – three from each group – were analysed with regard to the quality of language-related episodes. The data analysis showed that indirect WCF plus oral prompt was more effective in leading the NNSs to actively engage with negotiation of form during the discussion phase. This result will be discussed together with other findings which emerged from the analysis, with the aim to provide useful insights on how to promote focus on form when implementing peer-review activities in telecollaboration programmes.

This research aimed to determine the effect of WCF (Written Corrective Feedback), direct and indirect, on overall accuracy, error types, and overall accuracy and fluency in pre-test, post-test, and delayed post-test in rewritten text. The research questions examined the potential links between the direct & indirect WFC, grammar & non-grammar errors, and standpoint of feedback for accuracy and fluency. A total of 100 English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students from the University of Pahlawan Tuanku Tambusai in Indonesia were involved in the research. The findings revealed significant variations among the three experimental groups in the proportions of both effectively and unsuccessfully rectified errors. as well as the proportions of uncorrected and deleted errors in both grammar and non-grammar categories. The cohort that received the Direct WCF had the most significant enhancement in accuracy. This study showed that offering direct WCF (written corrective feedback) can enhance participants accuracy gradually over an extended period of time (long term). Indirect written corrective feedback (WCF) can enhance participants' fluency in terms of overall word count. while direct WCF can improve participants' fluency in terms of t-units over a longer period of time.