The Differential Effects of Corrective Feedback Strategies on Accuracy in Nouns, Tenses, and Articles in EFL Students’ Academic Writing
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Abstract
Corrective feedback (CF) is widely recognized by instructors and students as a valuable tool for enhancing writing skills. For writing teachers, it is crucial to understand the effectiveness of various CF methods and their impact on specific error types. This study aims to examine whether three different feedback strategies—Direct CF, Direct CF combined with written metalinguistic feedback, and Direct CF combined with oral metalinguistic feedback through a mini teacher-student conference— given to 45 undergraduate EFL students on three error types (nouns, verb tenses, and articles) led to improved accuracy in new writing tasks. The inferential statistical analysis reveals that the feedback strategies have differential impacts on students’ accuracy in addressing the three targeted errors when analyzed collectively. Participants who received additional metalinguistic feedback in addition to direct CF outperformed those receiving direct CF alone, although no significant difference was observed between the two metalinguistic feedback groups. Notably, when error categories were analyzed separately, significant improvement in verb tense accuracy was observed at four-week intervals, while no such improvement was evident for nouns and articles. These findings underscore the critical role of metalinguistic feedback, either written or oral, in addressing specific error categories and enhancing students’ writing accuracy. They also suggest that different error types may require distinct feedback approaches and timeframes for effective improvement of writing accuracy.
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References
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