Farhad Jafari will be defending his MA thesis at 1:00 pm (Pacific Time) on Tuesday, March 23rd virtually via Zoom.
All are welcome to attend.
Join Zoom Meeting (please arrive 5 minutes early)
Meeting ID: 663 7374 0577
Passcode: 012999
Supervisory Committee:
Dr. Guofang Li (research supervisor), Dr. Ling Shi, Dr. Reginald D’Silva
Title: Written corrective feedback and writing performance: A study of the effects of learner preferences on accuracy development of Iranian English language learners
Abstract:
Written corrective feedback (CF) is defined as language teachers’ responses to the appropriateness or accuracy of students’ writing in second language production (Li & Vuona, 2019). Although written corrective feedback (WCF) has been investigated through different lens, the relation between learner preference to the explicitness of written corrective feedback and their performance in writing is scarce in the literature. This quasi-experimental study aims to bridge this gap by studying the impact of learner feedback preference on writing accuracy in text revision in the EFL context in Iran. Sample for this study included intermediate-level students (N=15) from an English language institute. Learner feedback preferences to either direct or indirect feedback were collected through a questionnaire. The same group of students were then asked to complete two writing tasks and received a different type of feedback each time. For the first task, the students received their unfavored feedback type (the type that they did not like) and revised their writings in the classroom. For the second task, the written feedback was adjusted according to their preferred types. The revision was done in the classroom after each feedback cycle. The error ratios of writings and revisions in both sessions were calculated and compared. The results of the paired samples t-test between the error ratio reductions show that there is a significant difference between two sessions of feedback. The large effect size (Hedge’s g=0.87) indicates that provision of feedback according to learner preferences may have a positive impact on writing performance of language learners. The study has important implications for writing instruction in the EFL context.