A Research Of The Effects Of Written Corrective Feedback On EFL Learners’ Acquisition Of Attributive Clause

Attributive Clause is one of the most important and difficult aspects in grammar teaching in high school. It has been proved that corrective feedback (CF) in the error correction plays a key role in the EFL learners’acquisition of the grammar structures. In the past decades, most of the researchers have focused their studies on the grammar structure of definite and indefinite article from the perspective of written corrective feedback, and scarcely on other grammar structures, even less on Attributive Clause.This study, which was targeted at students in grade one in high schools, was designed to investigate the effects of different written corrective feedbacks (direct written CF and meta-linguistic written CF) on EFL learners’acquisition of Attributive Clause. The ultimate goal of the study was to help teachers and students get a correct understanding of the effect of written CF on students’ acquisition of the target structure, and provide the valuable references for the teachers to use the written CF wisely to enhance the effectiveness of grammar instruction.The research questions are addressed as following:1. Do different written corrective feedbacks have different effects on EFL learners’ acquisition of Attributive Clause?1) What effects does direct CF have on EFL learners’ acquisition of Attributive Clause?2) What effects does meta-linguistic CF have on EFL learners’ acquisition of Attributive Clause?2. For what reasons do the different written corrective feedbacks have different effects on EFL learners’ acquisition of Attributive Clause?1) For what reasons do the different written corrective feedbacks have different effects on EFL learners’ acquisition of Attributive Clause in terms of learners’perception?2) For what reasons do the different written corrective feedbacks have different effects on EFL learners’ acquisition of Attributive Clause in terms of learners’ reaction?The theoretical framework adopted in this study was based on the basis of the theories related to corrective feedback and L2. This study employed the mixed design of quantitative and qualitative approaches. For quantitative part, an experiment and a questionnaire were conducted, in which90subjects were chosen from grade one of certain high school; these subjects were assigned into three groups (two experimental groups and one control group),30students for each one. The direct CF group was only provided with direct written CF; the meta-linguistic CF group was only treated with meta-linguistic CF:for the control group, no feedback was given. In the experiment, each group took a pretest (multiple-choice), an immediate posttest (fill-in-the-blanks). and a delayed posttest (error correction). After the pretest, the two experimental groups received the two different feedback respectively (direct written corrective CF and meta-linguistic written corrective CF). All the subjects were required to participate in the survey after the experiment. For qualitative part, an interview was carried out and6subjects (two students from each group) were picked out.The data analysis generated the following results:Firstly, this study proves that both direct CF and meta-linguistic CF have effective and lasting impact on students’acquisition of attributive clause, which negates the findings that written CF has a negative effect on EFL learners’ acquisition of a foreign language (Truscott,1996). The data all indicate that the meta-linguistic CF have better effects on the acquisition of grammar structures than the direct CF (meta-linguistic CF at the level of.000. while direct CF at the level of.021).Secondly, the results of the questionnaire show that students’ enhancement of the ability of acquisition of the grammar structure stems from students’ keen interest in meta-linguistic CF. Students in both direct CF group and meta-linguistic CF group prefer meta-linguistic CF to direct CF. Most students expect not only the written CF but also the enough useful information of the target structure from the teachers, with which the students can explore more deep-rooted knowledge of other aspects. The results of the interview show that students’ improvement of the acquiring ability of the grammar structure derives from the effects of teachers’ written CF on students’ ability of self-correction. After the written CF and error correction were offered by the teachers, most of the students always check the error correction repeatedly until they can apply target structure correctly.The major findings generated from this study may have some pedagogical implications:Firstly, in order to improve the students’ ability of grammar learning, teachers should often employ meta-linguistic CF to carry out the teaching activities in order to offer much more absorbable, sufficient and comprehensible information, which contributes to internalization of the students’knowledge. Furthermore, teachers should synthesize written corrective feedback with other teaching methods so as to maximize the effect of language teaching.Secondly, teachers should provide some positive feedbacks for the students to arouse their interests in language learning, and pay more attention to students’ perception towards different corrective feedbacks. In the practice of teaching, the teachers should adopt different types of written corrective feedbacks to stimulate the students’ potentiality of error correction. Furthermore, teachers should realize that to some extent the reason why some students can not correct the errors is partly because the teachers have not provided corrective feedbacks on time in an appropriate way.