Effect of Unfocused vs. Focused Written Feedback on Writing Accuracy: corrective writing feedback

The study examines the effect of unfocused vs. focused written corrective feedback on the writing accuracy of Iranian advanced EFL learners.The findings revealed that the participants in the focused group improved in their writing accuracy although the improvement was not significant. However, it was found that the unfocused group performed worse in comparison to the scores obtained from their pre-test. This might adhere to some researchers’ claims that corrective feedback might not be effective since learners’ acquisition of various grammatical features is slow and complicated and that when feedback on various structures is provided, learners might be unable or unwilling to make use of them effectively while composing a new piece of writing.

Behzad Ghonsooly is associate professor in the Department of English language and Literature at Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran. He specializes in introspection research, and language testing.Amirali Movahed got his MA in Applied Linguistics from Garmsar Islamic Azad Universtiy. He teaches English at private English institutes.