| Written corrective feedback in the field of second language research has always been a hot topic.A number of studies at home and abroad explore the effectiveness of written corrective feedback on writing accuracy,but there is no consistent agreement about it till now.While it is still a controversial subject whether giving WCF is effective for second language learners’ writing accuracy,more and more scholars focused on the types of WCF and investigated which type of written corrective feedback should be provided for learners.In recent years,many studies were conducted to compare the differential effects of focused and unfocused written corrective feedback,but most of them were conducted under the circumstances of English as a second language,and the subjects were intermediate or advanced English learners.While relatively few related studies were conducted focusing on lower-intermediate English learners,under the circumstances of English as a foreign language.Based on Noticing Hypothesis and Comprehensible Output Hypothesis,the present study attempts to deal with the following three questions:1)What are the effects of teachers’ written corrective feedback on junior high school students’accurate use of verbs?2)Which type of WCF is more effective in improving junior high school students’accurate use of verbs,focused or unfocused WCF?3)What are junior high school students’attitudes and expectations towards focused and unfocused WCF?The quasi-experiment has lasted for 16 weeks with a pre-test,four treatments,an immediate post-test and a delayed post-test.149 students from three parallel classes in Grade one of junior high school in Shen Zhen participated in the current study.They were randomly divided into three groups based on their existing classes(two experimental groups and one control group).48 students in the first group received focused WCF on the accurate use of verbs(mainly including verb tense,verb forms,subjective-verb agreement);51 students in second group received unfocused WCF on all types of grammatical errors;50 students in the third group didn’t receive any type of WCF.During the process of the experiment,each student needed to complete seven writing tasks and revised their writing according to the given feedback.This study adopted SPSS 17.0 to analyze the data collected from pre-test,immediate post-test,and delayed post-test.More specifically,paired-sample t test was used to explore the differences on the accurate use of verbs in each group before and after the experiment.One-way ANOVA test was used to find out whether there were significant differences among the three groups in the pre-test,immediate post-test and delayed post-test.At the end of the experiment,12 students from two experimental groups were interviewed to delve into some in-depth and authentic evaluation on focused and unfocused WCF.The experiment obtained the following findings:Firstly,the experimental results showed that compared with the pre-test,both focused group and unfocused group have a significant improvement on the accurate use of verbs both in the immediate post-test(P=.000<.05;P=.000<.05)and in the delayed post-test(P=.000<.05;P=.000<.05).However,the control group stayed unchanged both in the immediate post-test(P=.707>.05)and in the delayed post-test(P=.563>.05).This results indicates that both focused written corrective feedback and unfocused written corrective feedback have positive effects on junior high school students’ accurate use of verbs both in the short term and in the long term.Secondly,the current study demonstrated that in the immediate post-test,the focused group outperformed the unfocused group(P=.015<.05)and the control group(P=.000<.05),meanwhile,unfocused group outperformed the control group(P=.041<.05).In the delayed post-test,it is found that the focused group outperformed the unfocused group(P=.034<.05)and the control group(P=.000<.05),at the same time,unfocused group performed better than control group(P=.030<.05).The results shows that focused WCF only focusing on verbs lead to greater grammatical accuracy than unfocused WCF directing at all types of grammatical errors on junior high school students’ acquisition of verbs both in the immediate post-test and in the delayed post-test.To put it another way,focused WCF is more effective than unfocused WCF on the accuracy of verbs both in the short term and in the long term.Thirdly,as for students’ attitudes and expectations towards teachers’focused and unfocused WCF,most students believe that teachers’ focused and unfocused WCF is important for improving their writing accuracy.And many students prefer receiving focused WCF on their writing.In a word,the current study provides some pedagogical implications for English teachers on how to give effective WCF on writing instruction of junior high school.At the same time,it helps English teachers to have a better understanding of students’attitudes and expectations towards teachers’ WCF so that they can adjust their strategies of providing WCF according to students’ actual conditions. |
