The Effects Of Corrective Feedback On The Accuracy Of English Majors’ Writing

Feedback in the field of SLA has been a heat topic in the past several years all over the world. However, the debate of it has been going and the agreement about it has never been reached. Recently, the studies on feedback at home inadvertently were aimed at comparing the effects of teacher feedback and peer feedback. Faced with the situation, the research was turned to find out the effects of teacher feedback on the writing accuracy of English majors. Consequently, the study was carried out to investigate the effects of direct feedback and indirect feedback on the writing accuracy of English majors based on noticing hypothesis.Two classes from English department of one university took part in the study. They were naturally divided into two groups-group 1 receiving direct corrective feedback and group 2 receiving indirect corrective feedback. During the period of treatment,3 writings were finished altogether by them. Students in the two groups received corrective feedback respectively in the first two writings. Moreover, questionnaires and interview were used to investigate the learners’attitudes towards corrective feedback and the relationship between noticing and feedback.It was found that no great improvement on the writing accuracy was gained by students in the two groups. Meanwhile, there was no distinct difference in the last writing between two groups whereas there were few distinct differences in some aspects in the first two writings. In the first writing, there was no great difference on the whole. But as far as the verb form was concerned, students in group 2 did better that they made fewer errors than those in group 1.In the second writing, it was found that students in group 2 did better than those students in group 1 in terms of total and diction. However, there were no apparent differences in other aspects. Lastly, it was found that English majors appreciated corrective feedback and the feedback served as a mediator to raise students’ attention of comparing the revised writing and the original ones. Besides, more feedback on content and organization were preferred and welcomed by students.