The purpose of this study was to investigate to what extent written corrective feedback (WCF) is a good way to treat errors that L2 (second language) pupils make and if they attend to the comments in future written assignments. WCF is the most used response on written assignments. Some research takes the perspective that it is fruitful (Chandler 2003, Ferris 2003) while other research argues that it is inefficient and unnecessary (e.g.Truscott 1996, 1999). This study presents the findings of a survey on the topic which was conducted at a small school in the south east of Sweden. A comparison between previous research and the findings of the present survey is made and the conclusion from this is that there are limitations in the efficacy of WCF and the results suggest that the type of feedback and how it is delivered are important. It is also likely to be beneficial that pupils revise their texts in order to improve in writing English.

Research in corrective feedback (CF) has developed over thirty years; however, little is known about how metalinguistic corrective feedback (MCF) assists the development of procedural knowledge. This quasi-experimental study sought to evaluate and compare the roles of oral MCF in proceduralizing English as a foreign language (EFL) learners’ declarative knowledge of gender referents and morphosyntactical structure—third person singular -s. Sixty college EFL learners participated in the study. They were randomly assigned to the experimental group and the control group. All learners participated in 14 communicative form-focused activities that elicited the use of gender referents and third person singular morpheme -s in regular classes over 14 weeks. The experimental group received MCF on errors in use of the target structures. The control group received no MCF in use of the target structures. Pretests, posttests, and long delayed posttests administered 20 weeks after the instructional treatment assessed the participants’ declarative knowledge and procedural knowledge of both target structures. The metalinguistic knowledge test was employed to measure declarative knowledge. The elicited oral imitation test was adopted to measure procedural knowledge. Repeated measures ANOVA results indicated that the MCF group significantly increased their procedural knowledge of both target structures. Cohen’s effect size d revealed that MCF exerted a bigger effect on proceduralizing EFL learners’ knowledge on third person singular morpheme –s than on gender referents. These results also demonstrated a relationship between the efficacy of oral MCF and the target structures as well as the interactional effect of test formats tapping into declarative knowledge and procedural knowledge. These findings shed light on the learnability of difficult structures through MCF and the necessity to employ metalanguage in EFL classrooms.

Dynamic written corrective feedback is a strategy that raises student awareness of the patterned errors they make in their writing. Teacher feedback provides the location and type of error made in the form of error codes. Multiple studies have shown it to significantly improve the grammatical accuracy of student writing. This research examines the effects of the frequency of teacher feedback, on student written accuracy, fluency, and complexity whether daily or every-other-day. The total number of minutes students write for is also questioned since it is directly related to the amount of feedback students receive. This is done to make the process more manageable for teachers, as well as determine the optimum volume and feedback frequency that can be processed and benefit students. Findings suggest that 20 minutes of writing a week has the potential to significantly improve accuracy no matter how the time is divided. Fluency also has the potential to improve significantly if students are writing for 5 minutes and receiving feedback daily. As previous research on daily 10-minute writing has suggested that only accuracy will improve, this study is instrumental in highlighting specific modifications that can be made to the DWCF process that increase the potential for development of both accuracy and fluency.

Particular English language learners have a need to demonstrate high levels of accuracy in their written and spoken language production. Dynamic corrective feedback (dynamic CF) has been shown to facilitate L2 learner written accuracy attainment through providing manageable, meaningful, timely and constant feedback on authentic and frequent written language production. The research of this thesis examined the benefits of altering the dynamic CF model to be responsive to students' spoken production rather than solely their written production and measured the impact this adaptation would have on the established benefits of the instructional strategy on students' gains in written accuracy. The study also looked at the impact of both forms of dynamic CF on students' attainment of written complexity, fluency, and lexical development. The study included two groups of students whose language proficiency ranged from intermediate-low to advanced-mid who were studying English for academic purposes in an intensive English language program. These students participated in a one-semester Linguistic Accuracy course. Half of the students received the traditional form of dynamic CF in which they received feedback on only their written production, and the other half received a modified version of dynamic CF that provided students with feedback on only their spoken production. Before and after the treatment, samples of students' written production were collected through a thirty-minute essay test. These writing samples were analyzed for accuracy, fluency, complexity, and lexical development. Changes in each of these variables for both groups were contrasted using a mixed-model repeated measure Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). These tests revealed that there was not a significant difference in terms of the changes in accuracy or lexical development between the two groups; however, participants receiving the modified variation of dynamic CF did perform significantly better on the measurement of written complexity. Also, lower proficiency students receiving the modified version of dynamic CF did significantly better on the measurement of written fluency than students of a similar proficiency receiving the traditional form.

Second language (L2) learning has begun recognizing that intelligibility, comprehensibility, and accentedness influence how nonnative speakers of English are perceived by others. As such, pronunciation instruction is becoming more common in L2 curriculum around the world. Corrective Feedback (CF) is commonly given in the pronunciation classroom to draw attention to and correct learners’ errors. Research has tried to understand what forms of CF are most effective for language learning, how CF affects pronunciation, and what learners believe about CF. What is lesser known is if the frequency or rate of CF affects learner’s uptake and pronunciation error repair. Participants in this study were nonnative English speakers who were placed in the high frequency feedback group (HFFG) or the low frequency feedback group (LFFG). After an initial demographic and language beliefs survey, participants experienced a one-on-one pronunciation session with a pronunciation researcher. In the pronunciation session, participants received either high frequency feedback (100% of errors corrected) or low frequency feedback (50% of errors corrected defined as every other error corrected). An immediate follow up survey asked learners about their frequency preference for feedback and their emotional reactions to the feedback. After a nonparametric statistical analysis, results indicated that there were no statistically significant differences between the uptake rates of the HFFG and LFFG. Marginal significance was found in the repair rates between the HFFG and LFFG with the LFFG performing marginally better, but not to a statistically significant level. Frequency of CF may affect learners’ error repair rates. The immediate follow up survey indicated that most participants were inaccurate in their perception of the frequency of CF they received during the lesson. Only two participants changed their preference for frequency of CF after the lesson. These two wanted more feedback and no learner wanted less feedback. Finally, the same survey indicated that learners felt mostly positive emotions when receiving feedback, while only two experienced nervousness/anxiousness. Conclusions are that feedback frequency does not seem to affect learner uptake, but that frequency may affect pronunciation error repair.

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Performance anxiety has been a much-discussed topic in recent years, but many questions surrounding it remain unanswered. This essay investigates how written corrective feedback affects students' performance anxiety and how students and teachers attempt respond to performance anxiety in the classroom. Two questionnaires were administered to teachers and students to investigate how they give and receive feedback and how they handle negative emotions. The results show that a large majority of the students experience anxiety about written assignments and that teachers need to work more on teaching emotional regulation in the classroom to help students better deal with performance anxiety.

English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers use different strategies to support language acquisition when teaching. This study focuses on one particular strategy: Oral Corrective Feedback (OCF). It is provided to support learners’ oral language skills, and takes numerous potential forms which can either be implemented implicitly and/or explicitly. According to many studies, recast is the type of OCF most commonly used by EFL teachers. Studies demonstrate however, that recast is the least effective approach for EFL learners’ uptake. The aim of this research study is to investigate how Swedish EFL teachers provide students with OCF. In addition, the intention is also to explore teachers’ and students’ perceptions of the usefulness of OCF for their skills development in English. The focus of this research study is on Swedish primary schools of grades 4-6. Two types of data-gathering methods were used in this study: interviews and observations. The results confirm that both explicit and implicit OCF was provided when observing the teachers’ approaches and strategies in classroom settings. Surprisingly, this research study reveals that recast was not favoured by the Swedish EFL teachers as they considered other types of OCF to be more beneficial to EFL classroom settings.

Feedback can be given in many different forms, and the type that is written and strives to either correct students written errors or support their overall writing ability is suitably enough referred to as written corrective feedback (WCF) of which there are two main types of: indirect and direct WCF. We know that second language writers meet many obstacles, be that lack of motivation and vocabulary or misspellings and phrasal issues; nonetheless, teachers thought processes about what type of feedback to give on what type of error is of importance for the continuation of the development of sound feedback approaches. Therefore, we intend to investigate English teachers perceptions on the WCF they give with the help of the following research questions: What are primary school English teachers’ perceptions about WCF in order to promote their ESL students writing development? What are primary school English teachers’ perceptions regarding their choice between written direct CF or written indirect CF on their ESL students written production?To investigate these questions we wrote an interview guide, and conducted interviews with seven teachers in 4th to 6th grade, asking about their perceptions on the development of writing in English as a second language and how they would describe their corrective feedback and their thought process on what type to give and when to give it on their student’s writing. Our findings showed that all teachers acknowledged two types of students in their ESL classroom: the high proficiency and the low proficiency. The low proficiency need more direct, clear and specific corrections on most of their writing whilst the high proficiency benefit from more indirect CF in order to make use of their metacognitive thinking skills. The findings also revealed that teachers choose to use indirect or direct CF based on the activity and whether the purpose is to learn grammar or not. If the focus is grammar, they would choose direct CF, and if it was to write a fictional story, they would give more indirect CF in order to not stifle the student’s creative process and “take the fun out of it”. Our study points to a need of more research within the field of feedback in general, since there is not much evidence showing what approaches are the most beneficial. Another issue is that there are practically no guidelines for teachers to follow, telling them what type to choose and for what activities. This is something for future research to dig deeper into.

Research demonstrating the beneficial effects of corrective feedback (CF) for second language (L2) learning (e,g., Li, 2010) has almost invariably resulted from studies in which CF was provided immediately. Yet teachers are often encouraged to delay CF to avoid interrupting learners (Harmer, 2001). This study investigates how differences in the timing of CF on oral production affect L2 learning and learners’ reactions to CF. Theoretically, Immediate CF may facilitate L2 development by allowing learners to immediately compare their errors to accurate models (i.e., recasting, e.g., Doughty, 2001). The effectiveness of Immediate CF has also been linked to skill acquisition theory because some CF (i.e., prompting) is hypothesized to help learners proceduralize their L2 knowledge (Ranta & Lyster, 2007). This thesis introduces additional theoretical explanations to explain the effectiveness of both Immediate and Delayed CF. For example, reactivation and reconsolidation theory (Nader & Einarsson, 2010) holds that long-term mental representations are susceptible to change when they are recalled. Thus, both Immediate and Delayed CF may help learners alter their incorrect mental representations of language features if that CF reminds learners of those incorrect representations and provides them with accurate models. In a laboratory-based study, 90 intermediate-level adult ESL learners were randomly assigned to Immediate, Delayed, and No CF conditions. Learners took three pre-tests to measure their knowledge of the English passive construction: an aural grammaticality judgment test (AGJT), an oral production test (OPT), and a written error correction test (ECT). Next, they received some brief instruction on the passive. Learners then completed three communicative tasks in which the CF conditions were provided. These tasks were followed by immediate and delayed post-tests. Learners’ reactions to CF were elicited with a questionnaire. Mixed-design one-way ANOVAs revealed statistically significant improvement for all conditions over time on all measures, but no statistically significant differences between conditions. The questionnaires revealed that learners prefer Immediate CF, but that Immediate CF may constrain CF noticeability and learners’ independence, while Delayed CF may cause anxiety or embarrassment. In summary, altering the timing of CF did not differentially affect L2 development, but it did elicit different reactions from learners.