The Efficacy of Dynamic Written Corrective Feedback on Intermediate-high ESL Learners' Writing Accuracy

THE EFFICACY OF DYNAMIC WRITTEN CORRECTIVE FEEDBACK ON INTERMEDIATE-HIGH ESL LEARNERS’ WRITING ACCURACY Soonyeun Lee Department of Linguistics and English Language Master of Arts This study investigated the efficacy of dynamic written corrective feedback (DWCF) on intermediate-high students’ writing accuracy when compared to a traditional grammar instruction approach. DWCF is an innovative written corrective feedback method that requires a multifaceted process and interaction between the teacher and the students in order to help the students improve their writing accuracy. The central principle of DWCF is that feedback should be manageable, meaningful, timely, and constant. The research question was raised based on the positive effects of DWCF found in advanced-low and advanced-mid proficiency level students (Evans et al., in press; Evans, Hartshorn, & Strong-Krause, 2009; Hartshorn, 2008; Hartshorn et al., in press). Similar to previous studies, this study attempted to examine the effectiveness of DWCF in terms of proficiency level. It further explored students’ perspectives and attitudes towards DWCF. Two groups of ESL students participated in this study: a control group (n=18) that was taught using a traditional grammar instruction method, and a treatment group (n=35) that was taught using a DWCF approach. The findings in this study revealed that both methods improved the intermediate-high students’ linguistic accuracy in writing. However, the findings of this study suggest that the instruction utilizing DWCF is preferable to traditional grammar instruction when it comes to improving intermediatehigh students’ writing accuracy for two reasons: first, DWCF was slightly more effective than the traditional grammar instruction used, and second, students strongly preferred the instruction using DWCF to traditional grammar instruction. The findings of this study further validate other work suggesting the positive effects found in advanced proficiency levels. This study indicates that ESL learners benefit from manageable, meaningful, timely, and constant error feedback in improving their linguistic accuracy in writing. Furthermore, this study suggests the desirability of applying DWCF to other contexts.

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