A Study On The Effect Of Written Corrective Feedback On The Improvement Of English Writing Accuracy

Writing is considered the most difficult skill to master in English learning, especially for EFL learners. Both English majors and non-English majors in China always commit errors in their writing. Written corrective feedback (WCF) is thus proposed to improve students’writing accuracy. However, whether WCF is effective and which type of WCF is more effective have always been controversial in the research fields of second language writing and second language acquisition. A lot of studies have been conducted abroad about the effectiveness of WCF on the improvement of English writing for ESL learners. However, few studies have been carried out on this part for EFL learners in China. In recent years, many researchers at home have begun to realize the importance of WCF in college English writing, but there is still a lack of empirical studies on the effects of WCF in Chinese context. The present study aims to explore the effectiveness of WCF on the improvement of college English writing in China, a comparison of the effectiveness between direct CF and indirect CF, and students’ attitudes and preferences towards WCF.The study lasts for a whole semester,54non-English majors from Wuhan City Vocational College were chosen to participate in the study. The participants were from two parallel classes and they were assigned to two groups. Within the semester, each of the students was required to write7compositions on7topics, and then they were given different teacher feedback:direct CF and indirect CF, and were required to revise their compositions according to teacher’s feedback. The number of errors per hundred words from the first and the last composition of each student were stored and analyzed by SPSS17.0. Independent-Samples T Test and Paired-Samples T Test were mainly used to test the differences between the two groups before and after the experiment and the differences of each group before and after the experiment. At the end of the semester, a questionnaire was distributed to examine students’attitudes and responses to teacher feedback.The major findings from the empirical study and the questionnaire are as follows:Firstly, WCF is effective in improving students’writing accuracy, whether it is direct or indirect. Secondly, direct CF can lead to more significant improvements in students’writing accuracy than indirect CF.Thirdly, most students expect teachers to provide feedback on their errors and find that teacher feedback does help them improve their writing accuracy, and of the two types of feedback, they prefer direct CF.This study provides the empirical evidence about the effectiveness of WCF on the improvement of writing accuracy and some pedagogical implications on English writing teaching in China.