The Effects of Focused and Unfocused Feedback on EFL College Learners’ Accuracy of Type III Conditionals

• Main Authors: Lin, Hsi-chieh, 林希潔
• Other Authors: Kung, Hui-i
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2017
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/5y73fq

碩士 === 國立彰化師範大學 === 英語學系 === 105 === This study investigated the effects of focused and unfocused written corrective feedback (WCF) on Taiwanese college students’ accurate use of Type III conditionals in revised and new writing. A class of 53 sophomore English majors from a university in central Taiwan participated in this study and was assigned to a focused WCF (n=18), an unfocused WCF (n=17), and a content-oriented group (n=18) based on their scores on a paper-based TOEFL Structure and Written Expressions test. The instruments included a written error correction test (EC) and two picture-cued writing tasks. The participants were given the EC and the first writing task as the pretest, a revision of the first writing task one week later, and the second writing task and the same EC test two weeks after the posttest. Both WCF groups were provided direct correction, with the focused group on the target structure and the unfocused group on all grammatical features. The content-oriented group received general feedback only on the content. The ratio of the accurate uses of the target structure to all those uses produced by each participant in each piece of writing was converted into a percentage for further t-test and ANOVA analyses. The results show that focused and unfocused WCF were comparably effective in enhancing the participants’ accurate use of the target structure in revision and new writing. In addition, the results further indicate that both types of WCF contributed to improved ability to recognize and correct the errors of the target structure.