Effects Of Written Corrective Feedback And Linguistic Analysis On English Attributive Clause

Written corrective feedback(WCF) has always been the focus in the field of SLA and L2 writing. Up to now, no consensus has been reached on the issues such as “whether WCF works”and “which kind of WCF is more effective”. A few empirical studies have shown that WCF could improve grammatical accuracy, however, most of them just focus on the simple structures rather than the complex ones. On the basis of the previous studies, this thesis chooses language analytical ability(LAA) as the individual difference factor and tries to explore the efficacy of English attributive clause depending on direct WCF and meta-linguistic WCF. The specific questions are as follows:(1) How do the direct WCF and meta-linguistic WCF affect the accuracy in using the attributive clause?(2) Can the effect of the direct WCF and meta-linguistic WCF be sustained over time? If it can, which one is better?(3) To what extent does the language analytical ability mediate the effectiveness of WCF?The subjects were 90 students of senior high school in Shandong province. The participants were assigned into three groups: the direct WCF group(n=30), the meta-linguistic WCF group(n=30) and the control group(n=30). The direct WCF consisted of picking out incorrect words and writing in the correct ones. The meta-linguistic WCF consisted of crossing out the error, providing the correct form and including metalinguistic explanations of the rule and example. The research design included pretest, treatment, immediate posttest and delayed posttest. Both direct WCF group and meta-linguistic WCF group received six tests and three treatments while the control group just received six tests, and the whole experiment lasted as long as two months.All scores were evaluated objectively and were analyzed by using the SPSS 20.0, and this thesis obtained the following results.(1) In the immediate posttest and delayed posttest, the two experimental groups’ scores were better than that of the control group, and the meta-linguistic WCF group was better than the direct WCF group. This suggested that the WCF played a positive role in attributive clause learning, and the effect of meta-linguistic WCF was the best.(2) From pretest to immediate posttest to delayed posttest, the control group made little improvement. However, the direct WCF group and meta-linguistic WCF group made great improvement, and the latter was much better. This suggested that the effect of WCF could be sustained over time, and the effect of meta-linguistic WCF was much better than that of direct WCF both in short-term and long-term.(3) The effectiveness of WCF could be mediated by the language analytical ability. The correlation between the LAA scores and the test scores in meta-linguistic WCF group was higher than that in direct WCF group. It indicated that thehigher level of LAA in meta-linguistic WCF group made more progress in the accuracy of attributive clause.Written corrective feedback(WCF) is effective in improving learners’ grammatical accuracy, which provides some suggestions for our teaching. When teaching grammar, teachers should make full use of the feedback to improve teaching. When giving feedback, teachers should take some factors into consideration, such as the individual difference of students and the features of the target structures. What’s more, after giving feedback, teachers should encourage students to make revision and practice more, so that the knowledge can be well internalized and consolidated by learners.