Effects of Corrective Feedback on Grammatical Accuracy of EFL Writing

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the effectiveness of written corrective feedback (WCF) on grammatical errors as a method for improving English as a Foreign Language (EFL) writing. The research questions we asked were what the most commonly occurring errors are in Korean students’ English writing and whether WCF leads to the improvement of grammatical accuracy. Thirty-one Korean college students participated in an experiment which lasted for 12 weeks from March 30 until June 19 in 2015. In the experiment each participant took two-hour long writing classes and received WCF on grammatical errors in four essays. The results of the study showed that the most common errors were in the use of articles, prepositions, punctuation, verb-formation, and singular for plural, which is consistent with earlier studies (Cha, 1990; Han, 2014). It was found, however, that there was not a statistically significant difference between pre- and post-tests in terms of accuracy, suggesting that WCF is not helpful for improving grammatical accuracy of L2 writing. Informal interviews with seven participants revealed four possible reasons as to the ineffectiveness of WCF as a method of improving EFL writing: ① students’ beliefs that grammatical errors are inherent and consequently inevitable parts of L2 writing; ② instructors’ unclear feedback; ③ habit-formed errors; and ④ intimidating red-pen based corrections. This study examined whether WCF is effective for grammatical accuracy of L2 writing. An empirical study involving 31 Korean college students was carried out to see what the most common error types are and whether teacher WCF leads to grammatical accuracy. Teacher WCF was provided on the five most common errors participants made in their pre-test writing. The results demonstrated, however, that teacher WCF on four essays was not effective to improve participants’ grammatical accuracy.