The Effectiveness Of Direct Comprehensive Corrective Feedback On Language Accuracy In EFL Students’’ Writing

The usefulness of error corrective fe edback in the low-intermediate EFL students’ writing has been fiercely debated in the last two decad es. Based on the situation that there are no conclusive agreements on it, and there is an ur ge for some empirical evidence of it, the present study intended to investigate the ef fectiveness of error correctiv e feedback through the empirical study of the ef fectiveness of direct co mprehensive corrective feedback(DCCF) on the im provement of language accuracy(i.e. grammatical accuracy), not onl y in the revision of the same piece of writing, but also in a new piece of writing.In the experiment, 45 random ly chosen EFL(English as foreign language) students were divided into an experimental group(EG) which received DCCF treat ment and a cont rol group(CG) which received no corrective feedback. The st udy was made up of four stages: the pretest, the immediate posttest, the posttest, th e delayed posttest. All participants were asked to finish four pieces of writing during six weeks.Independent samples T-test was used to compare the differences in language accuracy between two groups. The results showed that there was a statistically dif ference between EG and CG in language accuracy, not only in the revision of t he same piece of writing, but also in a new piece of writing, which meant DCCF wa s helpful to the improvement of language accuracy in writing.The findings suggested that DCCF in writing was a useful educational tool for low-intermediate students to improve their language accuracy in writing over time.