EFL STUDENTS’ REFLECTIONS ON EXPLICIT AND IMPLICIT WRITTEN CORRECTIVE FEEDBACK

Year 2017, Volume: 7 , 98 - 102, 04.08.2017

Sultan Bozkurt Zeynep Camlıbel Acar

Abstract

Written
corrective feedback given by the teacher on students’ essays plays a significant
role in the development of language and writing skills of second language (L2)
learners. Whether explicit (direct) feedback or implicit (indirect) feedback
should be given to students’ errors in essays, and which of these is more
beneficial to learners has been a concern of L2 writing researchers for some
time. However, the issue of learners’ preferences on the types of written
corrective feedback has been overlooked. This paper aims to investigate Turkish
speaking English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students’ ideas about explicit and
implicit written corrective feedback. The authors attempt to answer the
following questions:

 

1-      
What
are Turkish secondary school students’ attitudes towards writing in English as
a foreign language?

2-      
What
are their preferences in relation to two different types of written corrective
feedback (explicit and implicit)?

 

In
order to shed light on the students’ opinions and preferences in terms of
written corrective feedback, a study was conducted at a Turkish state secondary
school in Istanbul. Seventy (70) seventh-grade female students, whose ages were
around 12, participated in this study. 
Half of the students received explicit feedback on their essays, while
the other half received implicit feedback. Students’ opinions were collected
via a questionnaire comprised of nine Likert-type items and one open-ended
question during the fall semester of 2016-2017 academic year. The closed items
were analyzed by conducting descriptive statistics, while qualitative data
analysis was used for the answers to the open-ended item. Results reveal that
students in both groups preferred one type of written corrective feedback more
than the other type. Various factors that might play a role in this result as
well as suggestions for EFL teachers will be discussed.

Keywords

L2 writing, EFL learners, explicit feedback, implicit feedback

References

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