The Effect Of Direct And Indirect Feedback On EFL Learners' Grammar Accuracy In English Writing At A Shenzhen High School

Most of Chinese students regard writing as the most difficult and challenging language skill,which plays a significant role in English language testing.Meanwhile writing is generally considered to be a reflection of learners' comprehensive ability of language usage.However,controversies continue as to whether corrective feedback contributes to improving L2 learners' grammatical accuracy in writing performance.Most studies carried out in L2 writing classes have reported some benefits for direct and indirect WCF in improving students' writing skill,against Truscott's(1996)claim that corrective feedback is not only ineffective but may be harmful;and thus,should be abandoned.This study,based on the previous research,investigates the relative effectiveness of different types of written corrective feedback(WCF)relative to error type in developing second language(L2)accuracy in writing.This study reports on a controlled classroom-based quasi-experiment conducted in an EFL High School context(N=60)that investigates the effectiveness of direct vs.indirect WCF on three target grammatical error types,lasting for eight weeks.The participants are students from one natural class of senior two and are divided into two groups receiving direct and indirect feedback respectively.All students are required to finish six compositions and then the errors per hundred words of the first and the sixth writings are collected and analyzed using one-way ANOVA and paired sample-test by SPSS17.0 to examine the difference among the two groups as well as each group before and after the empirical study.Next,at the end of the experiment,the questionnaires are given to the respondents to check the attitude students hold towards English writing and the TWCF.From the result of the study,both direct WCF and indirect WCF contribute to students' improvement in L2 writing accuracy.Students in direct group made more significant improvement than those in indirect group.What's more,most of the students attach great significance to TWCF and desire for teacher feedback to improve their writing accuracy.Results provide further evidence in support of moderate effectiveness of WCF for both direct and indirect methods.Pedagogical and theoretical implications are discussed,as well as suggestions for future research on WCF.