The Effects of Written Corrective Feedback Types on the Prepositions of Place and Time in EFL Context

Öz

Written Corrective Feedback (WCF) has been a centre of a lively debate among English as a Foreign Language (EFL) and English as a Second Language (ESL) researchers and practitioners. For this motive, the present study sets out to examine the effects of WCF on the accuracy of the EFL students in second language (L2) writing. For this reason, a pre-test-post-test-delayed post-test design was used to compare the effects of direct-focused and direct-unfocused WCF on the accuracy of the prepositions of place and time: ‘-in, -at, -on and -to’. The students who were in the focused WCF group received direct correction on the errors related to the target structure only whereas the unfocused WCF group received direct correction on all of their errors (grammar, spelling and punctuation) including the target structure errors. In the post-test and delayed post-test, both experimental groups outperformed the control group, which received no correction. Between the focused WCF and unfocused WCF groups, on the other hand, no statistically significant difference was found in the short and long term. Thus, it was concluded that WCF, focused or unfocused, was helpful for the students to use the target structure more accurately. 

Anahtar Kelimeler

• Written corrective feedback,focused and unfocused written corrective feedback,error treatment,the prepositions of place and time,L2 writing

Kaynakça

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