The Effects Of Written Corrective Feedback On Students’Accuracy Of Transitional Words

There has long been a heated debate on the effectiveness of written correctivefeedback (CF) in the last twenty years. Some researchers such as Truscott held theview that correcting ESL learners’ errors in their compositions would not promoteeffective acquisition of grammar in new pieces of writing. Other scholars like Ferrisclaimed that clear and continuous error corrections would facilitate English as asecond language (ESL) learners’ accurate acquisition of grammar in their writing. Asa supplement to previous researches, this thesis was designed to investigate theefficacy of written CF on grammatical accuracy in the English writing of Chinesesenior high school students.Based on the study by Ellis, Sheen, Murakami, Takashima(2008) investigatingthe effects of focused and unfocused written CF on the accurate use of articles, thestudy in this thesis probed whether different types of feedback(direct focused, directunfocused and no feedback) given to45students would promote improvedtransitional word accuracy in new pieces of L2writing. Employingpre-immediate-post test design, the study also probed the difference in the effects offocused and unfocused feedback on the accurate use of transitional words. Thestudents were divided into three groups on average: a focused, an unfocused and acontrol one. The focused group only received corrections of transitional word errorsin their written practice, the unfocused group received corrections of various grammarerrors and the control group received no corrections but general comments. All thesubjects received three argumentative writing tasks and a set of tests: the pre-test, theimmediate post-test and the delayed post-test. The tasks were three pieces ofargumentative writing employed to initiate the use of transitional words by subjects.The tests were designed to explore the extent to which transitional word accuracywould improve. They were three pieces of topic-centered writing. The whole process of the study lasted for eight weeks.Results showed that the subjects from both two CF groups gained moresignificantly in transitional word accuracy in new pieces of English writing than thosefrom the control group did. In a short term, there was no significant differencebetween the effects of focused CF and unfocused CF; but in the long run, the retentionof grammatical accuracy by focused CF subjects was far better than that by unfocusedCF subjects. Overall, the results supported Ferris’ view that written CF had a positiveeffect on the improvement in grammatical accuracy and showed the advantage offocused feedback over unfocused feedback in promoting the acquisition of grammar.This study also suggests an effective method for teachers to intensively improve theaccuracy of certain grammatical feature in students’ L2writing.