Effects Of Direct And Indirect Feedback On Learners’ English Writing: The Case Of English Attributive Clauses

Based on Feedback Theory, the current study aims at investigating the effectsof direct and indirect feedback on learners’ English writing ability, using Englishattributive clause as target feature. The present study is attempted to find answers tothe following questions:1) Can the acquisition proficiency of English attributiveclause be improved by teacher direct and indirect feedback in the two groups?2)After the study, are there any differences in the acquisition proficiency of Englishattributive clause between the two groups of direct and indirect feedback? In terms ofusing English attributive clause, are there any differences in the frequency, accuracyand error frequency of relative word, subject-verb agreement and repetition?The experimental study on the above questions was carried out, which lasted16weeks. Two parallel classes of Chinese medicine major sophomore, which came fromShaanxi University of Chinese Medicine, participated in the study. The two classeswere randomly divided into two groups: the direct feedback group and indirectfeedback group (underline and code errors). The data were collected by pretest, fourcompositions and posttest, and processed by SPSS17.0.The results indicate that: indirect feedback is more helpful than direct feedbackfor the acquisition of attributive clauses for college students of non-English majors.1)after16weeks’ study, both groups can improve their error identifying and usingproficiency of English attributive clause except using frequency.2) in the erroridentifying proficiency of English attributive clause, the two groups has significantdifference. While in the using proficiency of English attributive clause, the twogroups does not have significant difference.3) in terms of using English attributiveclause, the error frequency of the three types of errors, using frequency and accuracybetween the two groups do not have significant difference.At last, the author advises teachers to attach the same importance to the twofeedback methods, to encourage students to use more English attributive clauses than ever in college English writing teaching.