Direct and indirect corrective feedback on EFL students’ writing performance

Abstract

Most studies have shown that students’ writing performance improves in accuracy over time after receiving written feedback from teachers, but there is little research adequately examining how different types of written feedback help the writing of students with different proficiency levels in general, and in relation to specific aspects of thecontent and form of writing, norinvestigating students’ preferenceswhenreceiving feedback. Therefore, to fill this gap,astudy was conducted to achievetwo research purposes: (1) to assessstudents’ writing performance after doing revisions based on written feedback, and (2) to understand the preference of students with different proficiency levels toward feedback strategies. The study involved 60 college students; 40 from NCYU and 20 from UT. The students were divided into four groups to receive two types of written feedback—direct corrective feedback inendnotes and indirect corrective feedback inendnotes. Student essays and responses to feedback preference questionnaire were analyzed to answer the problems. The results indicated that significantly, the low proficiency writers who received direct corrective feedback performed better than the low proficiency writers who received indirect corrective feedback. While, no matter whether direct or indirect corrective feedback was received by the high proficiencywriters, they performed equallywell. Moreover, all students had a positive attitude towards the teacher’s feedback. Also, they preferred receiving direct corrective feedback to indirect corrective feedback focused on content and form.