Effects of Teachers Written Feedback Types on Korean High School Students English Writing

Abstract

Providing feedback is one of the most important elements in a foreign language learning context because merely ensuring learners have plenty of writing opportunities does not guarantee the accuracy of their writing (Seker & Dincer, 2014). Thus, this study aimed to investigate the effects of different types of written corrective feedback a teacher can give on students English description writing. In particular, this study focused on three questions: (1) What are the effects of the different types of teachers written feedback on the EFL students description writing quality? (2) How do the effects differ according to students L2 writing proficiency? (3) How are the students writing develop over the process of writing and revision? To answer the questions, 78 high school students participated in an experiment, watching a silent film for approximately five minutes and then spending forty minutes writing a description about what they had watched. A teacher then gave the students different types of written feedback—namely, direct corrective feedback (DF), coded feedback (CF), uncoded feedback (UF), and no feedback (NF). After receiving the feedback, the students revised their works and submitted them again. From the analyses of students first and last writing, the data revealed that DF and CF were the most beneficial types of written feedback in improving students writing proficiency while UF did not show a more positive effect on the improvement of students writing than NF. Moreover, the different feedback type effects were detected in accordance with the students English writing proficiency. For example, DF was the most helpful feedback for higher-level learners than UF and NF, no difference in feedback types occurred with the middle-level learners, and for the lower-level group, three feedback types showed a significantly better effect on learners description than NF.