Corrective Feedback In Vocational And Technological English Writing Class

For decades, the issue of corrective feedback in language learning contexts has attracted considerable attention from language researchers and teachers. This study attempted to address some of the major issues regarding corrective feedback adopted in writing class from a cognitive processing perspective, for instance, issues like how English language learners interpret and process feedback message, how learners respond to different feedback forms. This study is targeted at the vocational and technological level of English major student and 80 students participated in a meaning-oriented error correction task and a form-oriented error correction task. Four types of English relative clause were chosen as target structure and three types of feedback forms were adopted, namely, whole-sentence underlining, specific marking of the error, and metalinguistic clues. The learners were required to fill out questionnaires that were used to assess the explicitness value of each feedback form.Based on the statistics drawn from the study, corrective feedback did have an effect on English learners' disposal of writing feedback processing. Three findings based on the research questions are the followings:the first finding showed that learners benefited from the feedback forms marking the location of the error than from those stating the nature of the error. The second finding was that learners' perception of feedback explicitness did have a significant impact on their error location and error correction. The last finding showed that the learners' feedback processing performance was considerably better in the form-oriented task (DEC) than in the meaning-oriented task (TEC). Some pedagogical implications were also offered on the basis of three findings. EFL teachers in writing class should adopt more time-saving yet eye-catching feedback forms. Additionally, the teacher should concentrate on learners'attempt at error detection after the feedback treatment.