Assessing the effect of giving and receiving written corrective feedback on improving L2 writing accuracy: does giving and receiving feedback have fair mutual benefit?

Abstract Although the findings of second language (L2) studies conducted to date have provided evidence for the positive effect of written corrective feedback (hereafter feedback) on improving L2 learners’ writing grammatical accuracy, there is no conclusive evidence regarding which kind of feedback is more beneficial for enhancing L2 writing. This study compares the differential effects of giving and receiving unfocused direct feedback on improving Iranian EFL learners’ writing accuracy. To this end, 61 learners of English were randomly assigned to three groups, including a feedback giver group ( n = 19), a feedback receiver group ( n = 22), and a control group ( n = 20). The participating groups took Cambridge English Preliminary Test (PET), completed four translation tasks as the treatment, and took two tests, namely a translation test and a picture description test. The data analysis indicated the effectiveness of the feedback provided by peers. Additionally, further data analysis revealed that the participants in the feedback giver group outperformed the participants in the feedback receiver and the control groups in translation and picture description tests, underscoring the positive effect of giving feedback on learners themselves rather than learners who receive feedback. The findings and potential pedagogical implications of the study are discussed in detail.