The Effects Of Different Combined Written Corrective Feedback On Senior High School Students’ Learning Of English Infinitives

The efficacy of written corrective feedback has always been a hot topic in the research field of foreign language teaching.Most studies focused on the influence which various feedback exert on students’ overall grammar learning effect,but few studies combined learners’ foreign language proficiency level with feedback types to study their effects on the learning of individual error-prone grammatical structure.Therefore,this thesis did an investigation on written corrective feedback and English infinitives with the aim of answering two research questions:(1)What are the effects of different combined written corrective feedback on English infinitives learning for senior high school students?(2)What are the effects of different combined written corrective feedback on English infinitives learning for senior high school higher-achievers and lower-achievers?The participants of this study were 40 sophomore students who were from a senior high school in Jiangsu province.In the present study,they were randomly divided into two groups.Students in Group A(n=20)received direct corrective feedback plus metalinguistic explanation and students in Group B(n=20)received highlighted corrective feedback plus metalinguistic explanation.According to the average scores which they got in the mid-term and final English exams in the first year of senior high school,the top 30%of the participants were classified as higher-achievers and the bottom 30%were classified as lower-achievers.The experiment consisted of three tests,three times of exercises,and a semi-structured interview.It lasted for six weeks.All tests and exercises adopted the same pattern:blank-filling and Chinese-English translation.Feedback was provided to students in each group after each test and exercise was done.At the end of all tests,the researcher conducted an interview with higher-achievers and lower-achievers selected to learn their attitudes towards corrective feedback.Through analysis,this study found that:(1)Both direct corrective feedback plus metalinguistic explanation and highlighted corrective feedback plus metalinguistic explanation had positive effects on senior high school students’learning of English infinitives.The first kind of feedback with higher degree of explicitness had a better immediate effect,while the second kind of feedback with lower degree had a better delayed effect.The less explicit the feedback was,the more thinking training students would get during the uptake process.(2)The treatment exerted a differential effect on higher-achievers and lower-achievers.For higher-achievers,the immediate effect of highlighted corrective feedback plus metalinguistic explanation was better than direct corrective feedback plus metalinguistic explanation but the delayed effect of the two feedback forms appeared to be the same;for lower-achievers,the immediate effect of direct corrective feedback plus metalinguistic explanation was better than highlighted corrective feedback plus metalinguistic explanation but the delayed effect of the first kind of feedback was not as good as the second one.Higher-achievers preferred to get indirect feedback while lower-achievers preferred direct feedback.The effects of feedback corresponded with their learning needs.The research results provided teachers with suggestions on how to choose corrective feedback according to students’ proficiency level.In addition,this study also pointed out its own limitations and put forward the direction of related studies for future research.