Effects Of Written Corrective Feedback On Junior High School Students’ Development Of Explicit And Implicit Grammar Knowledge

Written corrective feedback has been a crucial topic in the field of second language acquisition research,and is a key manifestation of the contribution of interaction to second language development.A growing body of research strongly predicts the positive effects of written corrective feedback,but no consensus has been reached on "which type of written corrective feedback is more effective?".While some empirical studies have shown that written corrective feedback can promote the development of some grammatical knowledge,there is few in-depth studies from the perspective of explicit and implicit knowledge,in spite of the fact that second language competence mainly depends on implicit knowledge.Therefore,this study aims to explore the effects of written corrective feedback on the development of explicit and implicit knowledge of the simple past tense in junior high school students,taking the "noticing hypothesis","output hypothesis" and "interaction hypothesis" as the theoretical framework.The study seeks to answer the following two questions:1.Do direct written corrective feedback and metalinguistic written corrective feedback promote the development of junior high school students’ explicit knowledge of simple past tense?If so,which type of feedback works better?2.Do direct written corrective feedback and metalinguistic written corrective feedback promote the development of junior high school students’ implicit knowledge of simple past tense?If so,which type of feedback works better?This study adopted a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods.The quantitative study took 91 Grade Two students from three parallel classes in one middle school in Nanjing,Jiangsu Province as the research subjects.Before the experiment,the subjects were required to participate in the explicit and implicit knowledge pre-test of simple past tense,and according to the test results,the subjects were randomly divided into two experimental groups and a control group.The two experimental groups received direct written corrective feedback and metalinguistic written corrective feedback,while the control group received indirect written corrective feedback.This study adopted the research design of "pre-test—treatment—mmediate post-test—delayed post-test".The experiment lasted for 8 weeks,with Week 2 to Week 6 as the intervention weeks.The subjects participated in the immediate post-test at Week 6 and the delayed post-test at Week 8.A semi-structured interview was used for qualitative research.After the delayed post-test,3 students in each of the two experimental classes were interviewed,and the interview results were analyzed.This study draws the following conclusions:1.Both direct and metalinguistic written corrective feedback promote the significant development of junior high school students’ explicit knowledge of the simple past tense,and the metalinguistic written corrective feedback has a long-term promoting effect,which is maintained for at least 2 weeks.2.Only the metalinguistic written corrective feedback can promote the significant development of the implicit knowledge of the simple past tense of junior middle school students,and this influence does not decline in two weeks.The teaching implications of this study are as follows:(1)In the early stage of grammar teaching,teachers can use metalinguistic written corrective feedback to promote students’mastery of grammar knowledge.After students become proficient,teachers can use direct or indirect feedback to maintain students’ memory of grammar knowledge;(2)Teachers should encourage students to timely revise and practice after receiving feedback,so as to promote the internalization and consolidation of explicit and implicit knowledge.