Focused and unfocused written corrective feedback on tenses and other types of errors

Abstract

This research study investigated whether written corrective feedback is effective on L2 learners? writing. It examined learners' noticing of corrected errors and their acquisition of tense and other linguistic forms (articles, spelling, pronouns, vocabulary usage and preposition errors). Nine EFL learners from Potisarn Pittayakorn School, a government secondary school located in Bangkok, Thailand participated in this study and composed four essays and performed thought-aloud protocol when going through their corrective feedback. Results obtained from the first essay show that the learners in the no feedback group performed better in terms of tense and other types of linguistic forms, followed by the focused feedback group and the unfocused feedback group. In the revised draft, the learners in the focused feedback group did better in tense in comparison to the unfocused feedback group and no feedback groups. In contrast, in the revised draft the learners in the unfocused feedback group did better in other types linguistic forms in comparison to the focused feedback group and no feedback groups. The post-test results show that there were marginal differences in the effects on acquisition on tense and other types of linguistic forms between the focused and unfocused feedback groups, but the delayed post-test results show that unfocused feedback compared to the focused feedback group actually yielded better long-term acquisition effects.