Effects of Focused Written Feedback and Revision in the Development of Explicit and Implicit Knowledge in EFL Writing

Abstract

This study investigated the effect of (a) direct written corrective feedback (WCF) and (b) opportunities for revision on the development of second language learners’ explicit and implicit L2 knowledge in an EFL setting. Twenty-six intermediate-level university students were randomly divided into three groups: two treatment groups (direct feedback, direct feedback + revision), and a control group (no feedback). In a pretest-posttest design, over the span of six weeks, participants completed picture-prompted writing tasks, timed grammaticality judgment tests and error correction tests. Participants also produced two new writings with members of the direct feedback + revision group being given an opportunity to revise their writing. The results for the direct feedback group indicated accuracy gains in posttests. There was also some evidence that these gains were dependent on the structure targeted. However, there was no comparable improvement in the direct feedback + revision group. Therefore, it was not possible to interpret these effects as strong evidence for development of learners’ L2 knowledge. Conversely, there was evidence that the direct feedback + revision group had benefitted from the opportunity to revise their writing.

The Contribution of Teacher Feedback to Learners’ Work Revision: A Systematic Literature Review

“…Regarding the contribution of feedback to the revision of learners' work in higher education, the vast majority of research is related to academic writing, i.e., the writing of texts, essays, and scientific arguments (Alvarez, Espasa, & Guasch, 2012;Lam, 2013;Wakabayashi, 2013;Ruegg, 2015;Patchan & Schunn, 2016;Grigoryan, 2017;Suzuki, Nassaji, & Sato, 2019;Isnawati, Sulistyo, Widiati, & Suryati, 2019;Cui, Schunn, & Gai, 2021;Suci, Basthomi, Mukminatien, Santihastuti, & Syamdianita 2021;Han & Wang, 2021;Thi & Nikolov, 2021;Mujtaba, Reynolds, Parkash, & Singh, 2021;Huang, 2021;Alharbi, 2022;Van Meenen, Masson, Catrysse, & Coertjens, 2023), as well as eighteen studies on the subject of English as a foreign language (Yang & Meng, 2013;Nakatake, 2013;Wang, 2014;Huang, 2015;Yu & Lee, 2015;Lei, 2017;Tajabadi, Ahmadian, Dowlatabadi, & Yazdani, 2020;Li & Zhang, 2021;Cheng, 2022;Soltanpour & Valizadeh, 2018) and as a second language (Ferris, Liu, Sinha, & Senna, 2013;Razali & Jupri, 2014;Shintani, Ellis, & Suzuki, 2014;Bao, Sato, Leis, & Suzuki, 2016;Conijn, Zaanen, & Waes, 2019;Yamashita, 2021;Endley & Karim, 2022;Koltovskaia, 2020).…”

“…Research unequivocally demonstrates that both direct and indirect feedback are crucial for learners to improve their work (Alvarez, Espasa, & Guasch, 2012;Nakatake, 2013;Shintani, Ellis, & Suzuki, 2014;Bao, Sato, Leis, & Suzuki, 2016;Endley & Karim, 2022). Learners respond positively to all forms of written feedback (Lei, 2017;Alharbi, 2022), which motivates them to successfully revise their work (Razali & Jupri, 2014;Bao, Sato, Leis, & Suzuki, 2016;Lei, 2017;Suzuki, Nassaji, & Sato, 2019;Isnawati, Sulistyo, Widiati, & Suryati, 2019;Sigott, Fleischhacker, Sihler, & Steiner, 2019;Valizadeh, 2021).…”

“…A combination of audio-visual and text-based feedback has a significant impact on text revisions (Grigoryan, 2017). Corrective and critical feedback also proves effective in stimulating learners to revise their work (Ferris, Liu, Sinha, & Senna, 2013;Razali & Jupri, 2014: Shintani, Ellis, & Suzuki, 2014Soltanpour & Valizadeh, 2018;Sigott, Fleischhacker, Sihler, & Steiner, 2019;Suzuki, Nassaji, & Sato, 2019;Isnawati, Sulistyo, Widiati, & Suryati, 2019;Yamashita, 2021;Mujtaba, Reynolds, Parkash, & Singh, 2021;Cheng et al, 2021;Endley & Karim, 2022). Thorough feedback is highly appreciated by learners (Wilken, 2018), as well as specific feedback (Yu and Lee, 2015;Lei, 2017;Huang, 2021) and peer feedback confers significant benefits to their revisions (Wakabayashi, 2013;Wang, 2014;Yu & Lee, 2015;Ruegg, 2015;Patchan & Schunn, 2016;Lei, 2017;Tajabadi, Ahmadian, Dowlatabadi, & Yazdani, 2020;Pham, Huyen, & Nguyen, 2020;Abri, 2021;Cui, Schunn, & Gai, 2021;Li & Zhang, 2021;Huang, 2021;Van Meenen, Masson, Catrysse, & Coertjens, 2023).…”