Academic Writing and Grammatical Accuracy: The Role of Corrective Feedback

Abstract

Investigations into the effect of providing corrective feedback on L2 writing  have often produced contradictory results. This study, following a line of research concerned with the role of corrective feedback in writing, contributes to this line of research by analyzing different feedback types in an EFL academic writing context. 45 graduate university students enrolled in an academic writing course were provided with different types of feedback (direct feedback; student-teacher conference; no corrective feedback) over a course of 12 weeks (24 sessions). The study found significant immediate and delayed effects for the student-teacher conference type of feedback on students’ overall accuracy improvement. It is suggested that improvements in writing accuracy could at least in one respect be attributed to the type of feedback provided.