The Effect Of Different Written Corrective Feedback In EFL Writing In A High School

In the EFL teaching practice in Ningbo, China, writing is regarded as a textual product and acorrect arrangement of words, clauses and sentences. Therefore, in EFL writing classes, theteachers paid much attention to the form and the feedback that the teachers give are mostly writtencorrective feedback. However, the controversy of the effects of the written corrective feedback isfar from being settled. John Truscott’s review article “The Case against Grammar Correction in L2Writing Classes” in1996trigged fierce debates on whether students should be given writtencorrective feedback for their writing work. Though there are a great number of empirical studiesdone abroad, the empirical studies about the effects of written corrective feedback in China arelimited. Most of the studies home and abroad have been carried out at the college level with high-intermediate students. And the studies in China usually don’t cover both the effects of writtencorrective feedback on the reduction of grammatical errors and writing quality. Thus, the presentstudy is carried out and tries to answer the following questions:1. Is written corrective feedback effective in improving writing accuracy in a high school EFLclassroom in Ningbo? If it is effective in improving writing accuracy, what type of feedback isrelatively more effective in the context of high school EFL writing in Ningbo?2. Does written corrective feedback harm the writing quality in high school EFL classrooms inNingbo?33students from one class in Ningbo No.4High School participated in this8-week study.They were divided into three groups, receiving direct corrective feedback, indirect feedback andcontent feedback correspondingly. Every participant wrote5argumentative essays and revisedtheir work based on the feedback given by the teachers. Their performance on writing accuracy andquality of Essay1and Essay5were recorded and then analyzed by SPSS19.0.The main findings are:1) both direct and indirect corrective feedback are useful forimproving writing accuracy in new pieces of writing;2) indirect corrective feedback is relativelymore effective;3) written corrective feedback does not do harm to students’ writing quality.Based on the study, some advice on giving effective feedback is given in the hope of helpingteachers provide more appropriate feedback in EFL writing classrooms so as to improve students’writing ability.