Effects Of Focused And Unfocused Corrective Feedback On Grammatical Accuracy In EFL Learners' Oral Productive Task

Corrective feedback(CF),one of the hot issues in the field of second language acquisition,has been widely used in instructed second language acquisition.Over the past decades,studies of focused and unfocused CF sprang up.However,the controversy over the effectiveness of focused and unfocused CF remains unsolved,and only a few studies have looked at learner factors,such as language proficiency and working memory capacity(WMC),which might moderate the effects of CF.Therefore,the present study aims at exploring the effects of focused and unfocused CF and the moderating effects of language proficiency and WMC on the effects of CF.Three research questions are proposed:1)What are the effects of focused and unfocused CF on Chinese EFL learners' grammatical accuracy of English articles?2)Does language proficiency moderate the effects of focused and unfocused CF on grammatical accuracy of English articles?3)Does WMC moderate the effects of focused and unfocused CF on grammatical accuracy of English articles?A controlled comparison experiment was carried out among 67 intermediate English learners.These participants were divided into three groups: a focused CF group(FG),an unfocused CF group(UFG),and a control group(CG).The FG received focused CF with English articles as the target structure;the UFG received CF of verbs,noun endings,articles,word choices,and sentence structures;and no CF was provided in the CG.All the participants were asked to complete four retelling tasks and two error correction tests to measure their mastery of English articles.The study lasted for five weeks,and participants completed a language proficiency test,two error correction tests(one before the main experiment and one after the experiment),two WMC tests,namely,a listening span test(LST)and a speaking span test(SST),two questionnaires and an interview during this period.The findings are summarized as the following:1)Focused CF was more effective than unfocused CF on participants' grammatical accuracy of English articles in oral production and the results of error correction test.With the CG as a benchmark,the effect size of focused CF was larger than that of unfocused CF in the posttests(namely,the in the second,third and fourth retelling tasks).2)Language proficiency did not moderate the effects of CF in the second,third or fourth retelling tasks.No significant moderating effect of language proficiency was found on the effects of CF in second error correction test,either.Such findings show that,for intermediate EFL learners,language proficiency does not moderate the effects of focused or unfocused CF on their grammatical accuracy of English articles in general.3)As for WMC,LST did not moderate the effects of CF in the second,third or fourth retelling tasks.SST potentially moderated the effects focused and unfocused CF on grammatical accuracy of English articles in the second retelling task.SST significantly moderated the effects of CF in the third retelling task but not in the fourth retelling task.Neither LST nor SST moderated the effects of CF in the second error correction test.The results suggest that WMC moderates the long-term effects of focused and unfocused CF on EFL learners' grammatical accuracy of English articles.It can be inferred from the above findings that focused CF had enjoyed an advantage over unfocused CF in promoting EFL learners' grammatical accuracy of English articles in oral production.WMC potentially moderates the short-term and significantly moderates the long-term effects of focused and unfocused CF.Further analysis of the questionnaire for learner attitude and the interview after the experiment found that,with the CG as a benchmark,participants in the FG and the UFG paid more attention to linguistic forms.Therefore,instructors should choose proper CF types and teaching method in accordance with EFL learners' individual factors,which contributes to better learning outcomes.