The effect of different types of written corrective feedback on the linguistic competence of English as a foreign language (EFL) students

Abstract

There is a growing body of literature that recognises the importance of corrective feedback (CF) for second language acquisition (SLA). Recent investigations have compared different types of feedback to establish the optimum way to foster language learning. However, to date the number of studies analysing the effect of feedback on young learners is still very scarce. The present research examines the relative effectiveness of different types of CF on young learners’ writing performance. 48 students of English as a foreign language (EFL), aged 12-13, separated into three parallel classes, received different types of feedback: direct CF, indirect CF and reformulation. Quantitative measures of grammatical complexity, accuracy and fluency (CAF) were drawn from three comparable pieces of writing. The findings revealed that the indirect feedback group obtained better results. This group, followed by the direct feedback group, improved in complexity and fluency in the last task. They wrote longer and more complex texts. All three groups obtained worse results for accuracy measures, with a lower number of error free clauses.