Defining Grammatical Difficulty to Make Better Choices about Corrective Feedback: A Meta-Analysis of Persian EFL Learners

Abstract

Past experimental studies of corrective feedback (CF) have isolated factors like grammatical complexity, learner proficiency, and L1 one by one, carefully designing experiments that eliminate the influence of “extraneous” factors. Because each factor is actually codependent, more holistic study is needed. Eleven studies, all of which had English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners with a Persian L1 and productive measures of speech or writing, were selected for meta-analytic examination. Results suggest that type of grammatical feature, as well as associated learner variables such as L1 similarity or proficiency, collectively influence the efficacy of different CF types. As variables jointly add to the difficulty of a grammatical feature, CF providing a kind of scaffold, in the form of a written or oral reformulation from the teacher, appears to be the most effective. As grammatical difficulty decreases, learners appear to benefit from CF in which the learner is compelled to self-repair.

A Comprehensive Approach to Eliminate English Second Language Learners’ Grammatical Difficulties

“…However, teachers use various methods, ©Authors This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). http://ijlter.org/index.php/ijlter including indirect feedback (Schenck, 2021), which can be more appropriate in cases where a correct word could not be given. In this regard, teachers should engage learners in the correction of syntactically related errors.…”

“…Different types of corrective feedback, such as direct, indirect, and metalinguistic cues, offer varied benefits to learners (Schenck, 2021). Direct feedback that includes clear error correction promotes quick error correction.…”

Form-Focused Instruction, Technology, and Limitations: An Investigation of Past Research and Future Possibilities

“…To provide a more holistic perspective of multiple variables influencing the acquisition process, studies of CF were synthesized for learners with Korean, Persian, and Chinese L1s (Schenck, 2020(Schenck, , 2021(Schenck, , 2022b. Results suggest a potential pedagogical application of theory to practice.…”

Investigating Subjective Grammar Difficulty in Advanced Grammar Test

“…Secondly, test-taker perception also affects the difficulty of acquiring some rules. Factors such as the level of proficiency (Shiu 2011;Schneck 2021), the similarity of rules in L1 (Shiu 2011;Graus and Coppen 2015;Dehgani, Bagheri et al 2016), the type of test (Xu and Li 2021), inadequate practice/experience in L2 (Dehgani, Bagheri et al 2016), exception rules in English (Graus and Coppen 2015), language policy (Saengboon 2017), and incongruent conceptions of student-teachers' grammar cognition due to inconsistencies in the curriculum, incongruent teaching models, and uncertainty arising from the dichotomy of grammar as a pedagogical content knowledge or as a disciplinary knowledge (Graus and Coppen 2018) impact the perceived difficulty of acquiring some rules. Most of these studies (Graus and Coppen 2015;Graus and Coppen 2018;Schneck 2021;Xu and Li 2021) used different types of grammar tests to determine test-takers' grammar difficulty.…”