Effect of Two Types of Feedback on Accuracy Development of L2 Writing

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of two types of teacher feedback (i.e., error correction and commentary) on accuracy development in L2 writing. The research questions we asked were ① whether error correction and commentary lead to an improvement in writing accuracy; if so, which feedback type is more effective for accuracy improvement and ② whether error correction and commentary result in a decline in writing complexity. To examine these research questions, an experiment was conducted with two groups of Korean college students: an error correction group (N=25) and a commentary group (N=21). In the experiment lasting for 12 weeks in 2015, the error correction group received corrections on every grammatical error in four essays, while the commentary group received comments on content and organization in four essays. The results of the study were obtained by comparing the pre- and post-tests in terms of accuracy and complexity. They showed that both groups improved in writing accuracy over time and that accuracy significantly increased from the pre- to post-test. However, no significant differences in accuracy were found between groups in the post-test, suggesting that both types of feedback were equally beneficial to accuracy improvement. They also demonstrated that although complexity slightly regressed from the pre- to post-test, it was not statistically significant, meaning that writing complexity did not suffer as a consequence of teacher feedback.