چکیده:
Abstract The study aimed at investigating the efficacy of written corrective feedback (CF) in improving Iranian EFL learners’ grammatical accuracy. It compared the effects of focused and unfocused written CF on the learners’ grammatical accuracy. 75 EFL students formed a one control and two experimental groups. The focused feedback group was provided with error correction in tenses. The unfocused feedback group was provided with error correction in tense, articles, spelling, pronouns, vocabulary, and prepositions. The results indicated a significant improvement in accuracy for the two experimental groups from pretest to posttest. The outcomes demonstrated that giving written CF was effective, which enhanced learners' grammatical accuracy, and that focused and unfocused written CF were not of differential significant effect in such manner. The results on the construct of the attitudinal questionnaire indicated learners’ preference in two experimental groups for the interactional activities, error correction, and the different type of CF techniques. The mean scores on each content area of the questionnaire suggested that learners in the focused group scored higher than the other groups in their attitudes toward the errors to be corrected.
خلاصه ماشینی:
The Effect of Focused Corrective Feedback and Attitude on Grammatical Accuracy: A Study of Iranian EFL Learners Mahdieh Zohdi Rad, Department of English, Khorasane Razavi Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Neyshabur, Iran.
Keywords: Grammatical Accuracy, Written Corrective Feedback (WCF), Focused Feedback, Unfocused Feedback, Attitude Introduction The role of written corrective feedback has been viewed as an important part of second language (L2) writing teachers' instruction because it allows an individualized teacher-to-student communication, which is rarely possible in the day-to-day operations of an L2 writing class (Ferris, Pezone, Tade, & Tinti, 1997).
In addition, L2 writing students want, expect, and value teacher feedback on their written errors (Ferris & Roberts, 2001; Lee, 2004) and prefer to receive written corrective feedback over alternative forms such as peer and oral feedback (Ferris 1995; Leki, 1991; Saito, 1994).
While it is possible that the difference in the results of previous studies can be attributed to the variety of research designs and methodology employed (Guénette, 2007), it is clear that many studies have been conducted to examine the effectiveness of written error correction in improving L2 writing accuracy (e.
g Li, 2010; Lyster & Saito, 2010; Norris & Ortega, 2000; Russell & Spada, 2006).
Learners were asked to fill in the option that best showed their attitude about written corrective feedback, provided by teacher in two groups of focused and unfocused.
The Histogram Distribution of Attitude Questionnaire for Unfocused Group The results of this study reveal that receiving written corrective feedback helped learners to improve their grammatical accuracy.