The Effect of Coded and Non-Coded Corrective Feedback on Developing Accuracy of Iranian EFL Students' Written Performance

BackgroundLanguage as a formal system of signs governed by grammatical rules of combination to communicate meaning which can be described as closed structural systems consisting of rules that relate particular signs to particular meanings (Trask, 2007).Considering four skills of a language, reading and listening involve receiving information and so they are called the receptive skills, while speaking and writing are known as the productive skills because they involve producing words, phrases, sentences and paragraphs.Productive language skills, speaking, and writing, are important because they are the observable evidence of language acquisition.The more the speaker or the writer produces appropriate and coherent language the more we have proof of the progress in the learner"s language system.Teaching productive skills is also important because written and spoken communication are basic life skills.In real life, people generally may need to inform, convince, or share ideas.They are also sometimes required to take notes, fill in forms, and write emails, letters, reports, or stories (Adolphs, 2002; Knapp,1997).It is unavoidable to mention the ability to write correctly is very important.At the same time, most errors come from this side.Hence, teachers have responsibilities to help students recognise and fix their errors.In the last twenty-five years, approaches and methods to teaching English composition to ESL writers have continually evolved.However, throughout all of these years of changes, one aspect Abstract: Writing is one of four language skills which expresses who we are, even after our life time.It makes our knowledge, our personal aspirations and our work for the future visible to others.The ability to write correctly is precious; however, we may be unaware of unwanted errors we make.Corrective feedback gives you an objective evaluation of your work since it is often difficult for us to fairly assess our own writing.The present study attempts to get the effect of coded and non-coded corrective feedback on developing accuracy of Iranian EFL students' written performance.A 12-week treatment was given to 40 homogenous students who were studying English as a second language at Kish English Institute-Central Tehran branch divided into 2 groups aged from 18 -25.Our quasi-experimental research contained a pre-test, a post test, and two experimental groups.Corrective feedback (coded and non-coded) was the independent variable, which was the major variable hoped to be investigated.Accuracy of written performance was the dependent variable which was observed and measured to determine the effect of independent variable.The first experimental group received CCF and the second experimental group got NCCF in their writing tasks.The study concluded that there was a moderate effect of corrective feedback groups (coded & non-coded) on the post-test writing accuracy scores based on Cohen's (1988) guideline.It showed that NCCF group outperformed the CCF, so teachers can use NCCF for better results.It is advised teachers should incentivize students by showing them benefits of corrective feedback.Researches in the field of corrective feedback have different results still; therefore, doing as many researches as possible is the only way to cope with this situation.