Effects of direct and indirect comprehensive corrective feedback on non-grammatical accuracy in ESL students’ writing

This study investigated the effects of direct and two types of indirect comprehensive written corrective feedback (WCF) that differed in their degree of explicitness on students’ revision accuracy as well as short-term and delayed transfer effects of WCF on new writings over time. Feedback treatment was provided three times to test the durability of the effect of feedback. Participants were fifty-three intermediate level adult ESL students studying at a private ESL school in Canada. In order to explore the differential effects of explicit and implicit WCF on non-grammatical accuracy participants were randomly divided into four groups: direct, two indirect (underlining only and underlining+metalinguistic cues), and control group. Participants were asked to produce four pieces of narrative writing from four different picture prompts. They also had to revise those narratives over a three-week period. To find out the delayed effects of feedback on accuracy, all groups were asked to write a new narrative two weeks after the last WCF treatment. Findings demonstrated that both Direct and Underline only feedback groups made significant gains in non-grammatical accuracy in revision tasks. However, none of the feedback groups displayed any significant short-term and delayed non-grammatical accuracy improvements.