چکیده:
Usually writing teachers feel commitment to provide their learners with corrective feedback (CF) to their linguistic errors. The study investigated whether two types of written corrective feedback, indirect focused corrective feedback and indirect unfocused corrective feedback, produced differential effects on the accurate use of grammatical forms by high intermediate EFL learners. In this study, 54 female EFL learners formed two experimental groups and one control group. One experimental group received indirect focused written CF, and the other experimental group received indirect unfocused written CF for six weeks. The control group, nevertheless, received no particular feedback within this period. Results of performing ANOVA with post-hoc tests revealed the accuracy development of both experimental groups. However, unfocused group achieved the highest accuracy gain scores for simple past tense forms (copula past tense, regular past tense and irregular past tense) subject-verb agreement, articles, and prepositions. It was further found that unfocused feedback can contribute to grammatical accuracy but its long-term effectiveness is not quite as significant as its short-term effectiveness. The study also suggested that unfocused written CF reflects better teacher’s objective as it views writing correction as a whole rather than as a way of practicing grammar.
خلاصه ماشینی:
The study investigated whether two types of written corrective feedback, indirect focused corrective feedback and indirect unfocused corrective feedback, produced differential effects on the accurate use of grammatical forms by high intermediate EFL learners.
Keywords: written corrective feedback, focused feedback, unfocused feedback, grammatical accuracy Introduction In second language (L2) writing, feedback may be given on a wide range of issues including the text’s content, appropriateness of the vocabulary, and nonlinguistic errors (e.
g. Sheen, 2007; Bitchener, 2008; Bitchener & Knoch, 2008, 2010a; Ellis, Sheen, Takashima & Murakami, 2008; Sheen, Wright, & Moldawa, 2009) revealed the long-term effectiveness of written CF over oral CF on accuracy development in the writing of new texts.
Furthermore, adult language learners need to be corrected directly to avoid fossilization and develop linguistic competence (Doughty & Varela cited in Soori, Kafipour, & Soury, 2011; Ellis, 1998; Ferris, 2004; James, 1998; Lyster & Ranta, 1997; Tomasello & Herron, 1989).
When learners focus on just one language feature, their received CF seems to constitute written grammar exercises rather than authentic writing tasks (Ferris, 2010; Hartshorn, Evans, Merrill, Sudweeks, Strong-Krause & Anderson, 2010).
Then, the study set out to address first, the effects of indirect focused and unfocused approaches on past tense forms (copula, regular and irregular) and on a broader range of grammatical structures (past tense copula, regular and irregular past tense, subject-verb agreement, articles and preposition), and second, the long-term effects of providing grammar feedback on students' writing.