Effects Of Focused And Unfocused Written Corrective Feedback On The Acquisition Of English Subjunctive Conditional

The first research question concerned in the field of written CF is: should we correct the errors? In 1996, Truscott claimed that written CF is not only ineffective but potentially harmful. This is a challenge to the adherents of CF and then has been the focus of the debate (Ferris, 1999; Bitchener et al., 2005; Ellis et al., 2008). Although more than a decade has now passed, this controversy has not been resolved and there are widely conflicting answers to this issue since there are various limitations for the previous studies. Another main issue is how we correct the errors.This present study was to investigate whether focused and unfocused written corrective feedback help non-English majors to improve accuracy in the use of subjunctive conditional. The experiment lasted 9 weeks, involving 96 subjects. According to their pre-test scores and the types of feedback, the subjects were divided into direct focused, indirect focused, direct unfocused, indirect unfocused groups.The results indicated that all the treatment groups significantly outperformed the control group. However, in the immediate post-test, there was no significant difference between focused and unfocused groups, but direct focused group preformed better than indirect focused group, direct unfocused group better than indirect unfocused group; in the delayed post-test, focused groups outperformed the unfocused, indirect focused group better than direct focused group, indirect unfocused group better than direct unfocused group. Moreover, subjects'proficiency affected the effectiveness of feedback on improving accuracy in subjunctive use. It turned out that for high proficiency students, unfocused feedback was more effective than focused feedback, indirect more effective than direct in the short term and for the long run, it was still the same; for low proficiency, focused feedback was more effective than unfocused feedback, direct more effective than indirect in the short term and for the long run, focused feedback was more effective than unfocused feedback, and indirect feedback showed more potentiality in improving accuracy in target structure.This present study runs counter to Truscott's (1996) claim that corrective feedback is not only ineffective but harmful, thus it has provided further positive evidence in support of the effectiveness of corrective feedback.