Learners’ Beliefs And The Effects Of Two Types Of Written Corrective Feedback On Middle School Students’ English Writing Accuracy

English writing,an essential skill for English learners to improve their overall language skills,has always been a challenging aspect for many English learners.Many second language researchers consider teachers’ written corrective feedback to be an important means of improving learners’ writing accuracy,but there is no consensus on which type of written feedback is more effective.Subsequently,a number of researchers have compared various types of written feedback to produce more specific and detailed results.Notably,the results of these studies also reveal that the effectiveness of WCF can be influenced by a number of variables,such as the type of feedback and learners’ beliefs or preferences for the corrective feedback received.Although a number of scholars have recently conducted a series of studies on learners’ beliefs about different feedback types,little research has been conducted on the relationship between the effects of different feedback types and learners’ beliefs which needs to be further exploration.90 students from two parallel classes of a key municipal junior high school in Dongguan were selected as the research participants to explore the differences in the effectiveness of two written corrective feedback types and the relationship between the effectiveness of two feedback types and learners’ beliefs on written corrective feedback.The study used quantitative research methods by extracting data from students’ writing tasks and questionnaires to answer the following three research questions:1.What are the differences between direct WCF and indirect WCF in improving junior high school students’ English writing accuracy?2: What are EFL learners’ beliefs and preferences for the two WCF types?3: Is there any relationship between the effectiveness of WCF types and students’ beliefs? If so,do the students who receive their preferred WCF types produce written texts with higher accuracy than those who do not?The study found that:(1)Both direct and indirect WCF resulted in significant improvements in writing accuracy among learners,and the effects of WCF were more pronounced in the short term than in the long term.However,there did not seem to be much difference between direct and indirect WCF in improving learners’ English writing accuracy.(2)Most participants affirmed that grammar is important for English writing and they considered WCF as an important teaching tool that they could use to improve their writing.The study of the questionnaire also showed that most learners believed that direct feedback was more effective than indirect feedback in improving the grammatical accuracy of their writing.(3)Although most learners preferred direct WCF over indirect WCF,there was no correlation between their preference for different WCF types and the efficacy of WCF,i.e.,learners’ beliefs about corrective feedback did not seem to have an impact on the effectiveness of various types of WCF.Based on the above findings,this experiment not only enriched the research on the effectiveness of written corrective feedback,but also provided educators with some pedagogical insights aimed at promoting the maximization of the effect of written corrective feedback and its positive impact on students’ second language writing.