A Study On The Effects Of Different Types Of Written Corrective Feedback On Junior Middle School Students’ Use Of English Simple Past Tense

The accurate use of certain grammatical structures has always been one of the most important and basic criteria to assess students’ writing accuracy.Written Corrective Feedback(CF)is the most widely used method for teachers to assist students in improving written accuracy.However,written corrective feedback has been a controversial issue since Truscott(1996)contended that the written CF is ineffective.The fact that different written CF types exert differential effects makes the problem even more complex.Furthermore,most of the studies take English articles as the target grammatical item,and only a few investigate learners’ use of simple past tense in depth.Therefore,the present study tries to investigate the direct and metalinguistic corrective feedback effects of WCF on the accurate use of simple past tense by junior middle school by focusing on the following questions: 1.What is the effect of written CF on junior middle school students’ accurate use of the simple past tense? 2.What are the effects of direct CF and MF on junior middle school students’ accurate use of the simple past tense? 3.What are the differential effects of direct CF and MF on students of different linguistic proficiency?The study employed the pretest-treatment-immediate post-test and delayed post-test.The experiment lasted 9 weeks and 74 students from two classes in Grade 8 of a junior middle school were assigned into direct CF group,metalinguistic feedback(MF)group.According to the writing scores in the pretest,each group was further separated into high linguistic proficiency level and low linguistic proficiency level.The direct CF group received direct feedback of the correct form of the simple past tense,while the MF group received a metalinguistic explanation handout about the use of the simple past tense.Simultaneously,the performance of two groups in using the simple past tense was calculated by error correction tests and narrative writing tests.Then,the research employed a semi-structured interview to supplement.The data analyzed through quantitative and qualitative mixed methods,The research findings are showed as follows:First of all,written CF helps to improve the accurate use of simple past tenses by junior middle school students from the pretest data,which further confirms the value of offering written CF in student writing and provides positive evidence for WCF debates.Secondly,during the experimental process,the direct CF and MF have no statistical difference in helping students in gaining accuracy of the simple past tense.In the long run,the effect of MF is better than that of direct CF.Therefore,MF could be an effective way to provide CF in daily practice.Finally,direct CF and MF have different effects on students of different language level.For students with higher language proficiency,both direct CF and MF show equal effects over time.For students in the lower grades,MF has outperformed than direct CF in the long run.The study investigates the effects of different CF type on junior middle school students’ accurate use of the simple past tense and acquire some insights for English writing teaching.