A Study On The Effects Of Written Corrective Feedback On Chinese EFL Learners'acquisition Of Subject-verb Agreement

Written corrective feedback(WCF)has been one of the essential topics in the area of both second language writing and second language acquisition(SLA)for several decades.However,not much consensus has been reached so far even on the most fundamental issues like whether WCF is a useful practice.Moreover,most of the previous studies targeted article use in English while other linguistic structures such as subject-verb agreement have received only scant attention.With a “pretest-treatment-immediate posttest-delayed posttest” design,the present study examined(1)the effects of two direct WCF options on Chinese EFL(English as a foreign language)learners' acquisition of subject-verb agreement and(2)the relationships between learners' grammatical sensitivity and the effectiveness of both WCF options.Using the Oxford Quick Placement Test,80 intermediate-level freshmen from three non-English major classes at a university in Liaoning province were selected as the subjects for the study.The classes were randomly assigned to three groups: the direct WCF group,the direct metalinguistic WCF group,and the comparison group.The experiment lasted for eight weeks and it covered three treatment sessions and three testing sessions.During the three treatment sessions,all the subjects were required to finish three similar Chinese-English translation tasks and they would receive their corresponding feedback afterwards.Three error correction tests were adopted in the testing sessions to measure the subjects' acquisition of subject-verb agreement use and the Words-in-Sentences test was applied to assess their grammatical sensitivity.The data collected from the tests were processed through SPSS 16.0.The findings are as follows:(1)the provision of both direct WCF and direct metalinguistic WCF can help promote Chinese EFL learners' acquisition of English subject-verb agreement in the long term but the efficacy of direct WCF is not very obvious in the short term;(2)although the results indicate an advantage for provision of the two types of direct WCF over absence of feedback,no clear evidence is provided for the benefit of supplying metalinguistic information;(3)no significant relationship isevidenced between learner's grammatical sensitivity and the effectiveness of these two types of direct WCF.This study has both theoretical and pedagogical implications.It provides more empirical evidence to support the effectiveness of WCF on SLA and disproves the opposing claims about the ineffectiveness of WCF.It also probes into the moderating effects of learner difference factors on the efficacy of WCF.As a result,it is suggested that the provision of WCF in reviewing learners' writing output is necessary and effective.The findings reassure English teachers about providing the students with various types of WCF so as to arouse their awareness of the gaps between the interlanguage and the target language and promote their interlanguage development.Although the moderating effect of grammatical sensitivity on the efficacy of WCF is not very obvious in the present study,further studies should not ignore its potential effects and should take more learner difference factors like motivation into account in their research.