ERROR FEEDBACK IN L2 WRITING CLASSES: HOW EXPLICIT DOES IT NEED TO BE?

By D. Ferris, Barrie Roberts. 2001

1,262 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Though controversy continues as to whether error feedback helps L2 student writers to improve the accuracy and overall quality of their writing (Ferris, 1999a; Truscott, 1996, 1999), most studies on error correction in L2 writing classes have provided evidence that students who receive error feedback from teachers improve in accuracy over time. One issue which has not been adequately examined is how explicit error feedback should be in order to help students to self-edit their texts. In this experimental classroom study, we investigated 72 university ESL students' differing abilities to self-edit their texts across three feedback conditions: (1) errors marked with codes from five different error categories; (2) errors in the same five categories underlined but not otherwise marked or labeled; (3) no feedback at all. We found that both groups who received feedback significantly outperformed the no-feedback group on the self-editing task but that there were no significant differences between the “codes” and “no-codes” groups. We conclude that less explicit feedback seemed to help these students to self-edit just as well as corrections coded by error type.

Subfields: Education, Language and Linguistics, Literature and Literary Theory

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/438c7695bdaf298ed7d3787e013a6245d6f2c7e6

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Education

1. N. Storch
2. Icy Lee
3. D. Ferris
4. R. Ellis
5. Hossein Nassaji
6. J. Bitchener
7. C. V. Beuningen
8. K. Karim

In Language and Linguistics

1. Hossein Nassaji
2. N. Storch
3. Icy Lee
4. C. V. Beuningen
5. Younghee Sheen
6. D. Ferris
7. R. Ellis
8. K. Karim

In Literature and Literary Theory

1. N. Storch
2. Hossein Nassaji
3. Icy Lee
4. C. V. Beuningen
5. D. Ferris
6. Younghee Sheen
7. J. Bitchener
8. R. Ellis

Citations in the corpus

• Critical Feedback on Written Corrective Feedback Research. (2010, methodology): “…the influence of WCF and content commentaries on students’ writing (e.g. Fazio, 2001; Fathman & Whalley, 1990; Kepner, 1991; Semke, 1984: Sheppard, 1992) or the differential effect of different types of WCF (Chandler, 2003; Ferris & Roberts, 2001; Lalande, 1982; Robb, Ross & Shortreed, 1986).”
• A typology of written corrective feedback types (2008, background): “1 Revision required A number of studies have examined the effect of requiring students to edit their errors (e.g. Ferris and Roberts 2001; Chandler 2003).”
• The Effect of Different Types of Corrective Feedback on ESL Student Writing. (2005, background): “This distinction has been examined in two recent studies (Ferris et al., 2000; Ferris & Roberts, 2001).”
• THE EFFICACY OF VARIOUS KINDS OF ERROR FEEDBACK FOR IMPROVEMENT IN THE ACCURACY AND FLUENCY OF L2 STUDENT WRITING (2003, methodology): “Studies (Chenowith, Day, Chun, & Luppescu, 1983; Cohen, 1987; Cohen & Cavalcanti, 1990; Ferris, 1995; Ferris & Roberts, 2001; Ferris et al., 2000; Hedgcock & Lefkowitz, 1994; Komura, 1999; Leki, 1991; Radecki & Swales, 1988; Rennie, 2000) have consistently reported that student writers want such…”
• Effects of Written Feedback and Revision on Learners’ Accuracy in Using Two English Grammatical Structures (2014, background): “A number of studies (e.g., Fathman & Whalley, 1990; Ferris & Roberts, 2001) have shown that WCF enables learners to correct their errors when they rewrite their original text.”
• Feedback on second language students' writing (2006, background): “…accuracy through feedback on form if they are taught the rules governing directly ‘treatable’ errors (Ferris 1999), idiosyncratic errors are more amenable to indirect feedback techniques, such as locating the type of error and asking students to correct it themselves (Ferris & Roberts 2001).”
• Can Learners Use Concordance Feedback for Writing Errors (2004, background): “Feedback strategies are rarely mentioned in recent volumes of The Journal of Second Language Writing except to show how they may go awry (e.g., Yates and Kenkel, 2002) or how rarely they are evaluated against outcomes (Ferris and Roberts, 2001).”
• The effect of error correction on learners' ability to write accurately (2007, background): “…avoidance of one-shot experiments has been Ferris’s (1999, 2003, 2004) inclusion of what I will call the revision studies, which investigated learners’ success in revising an essay after receiving feedback of different types on it (Ashwell, 2000; Fathman & Whalley, 1990; Ferris & Roberts, 2001).”
• The Efficacy of Written Corrective Feedback in Improving L2 Written Accuracy: A Meta‐Analysis (2015, methodology): “Some researchers, among them Guénette (2007), have recommended that future studies be conducted over a longer term—up to several years—to assess how much feedback students need to improve their written accuracy or whether feedback is at all necessary.”