An Experimental Study Of Efficacy Of Dynamic Written Corrective Feedback In Efl Writing Pedagogy

Traditionally, the written corrective feedback (WCF) methodology used in writingclasses mainly refers to providing the correct linguistic form near an error and themeta-language comments on language in the margin, or underlining errors and markingerrors with certain codes. Over the last two decades, the issue of the effects of WCF hasbeen heatedly discussed in the educational field. In recent years, rather than focusing onwhether or not such feedback has value, some researchers and teachers begin divertingtheir attention to how to maximize WCF approach within the framework of learner,situational and methodological variables. In this background Evans et al.(2010) proposedan innovative instructional methodology—dynamic WCF which advocates that feedbackbe manageable, meaningful, timely and constant as well as individual-learner-targeted.The present study was designed to examine whether the linguistic accuracy would beimproved in EFL students’ paragraph writing over time when dynamic WCF approach isimplemented. Each of the twenty-six second-year Non-English majors who volunteered toparticipate in the experiment was asked to write a15-minute English paragraph no lessthan90words on a given topic per week in the duration of eight weeks. Those participantsreceived feedback in different ways. As treatment groups, Group1(coded feedback) andGroup2(underlined feedback) were exposed to dynamic WCF methodology while Group3as the control group was given feedback in the traditional approach. A total of208paragraphs were corrected and scored by using two measures of assessment (holisticscoring and error-free clause ratio) in terms of linguistic accuracy, and was later analyzed.The quantitative results revealed that1) WCF plays a positive role in the improvementof L2writer’s linguistic accuracy;2) dynamic WCF is effective and manageable, evenmore efficient than the traditional approach;3) in the practice of dynamic WCF, thereseems no significant difference between coded feedback and underlined one in regard toaccuracy.