Key Findings

The key findings from the project included:

• Written corrective feedback is effective in helping advanced L2 learners/writers improve the accuracy with which they use two relatively simple, partially acquired linguistic forms/structures – singular/plural nouns and subject-verb agreement. The study also shows that these benefits are maintained over time – in this case, over a 6-week period.
• These findings add to the growing evidence in support of the effectiveness of written corrective feedback for treating partially acquired rule-based discrete linguistic forms/structures.
• The study shows that written corrective feedback can be effectively provided on-line.
• Targeting two linguistic error categories rather than many categories and loosely defined categories is again shown to be an effective way of treating linguistic error difficulties and helping writers retain the level of mastery and control demonstrated immediately after feedback has been provided.     
• The findings of the study suggest little difference in effect between direct error correction and coded meta-linguistic feedback. The only difference between the two was found in their effect on subject-verb agreement. It may be that some forms/structures such as this are more effectively treated when the nature/cause of the error is revealed. On the other hand, in the case of singular/plural nouns, error correction was sufficient.

Key Recommendations

The key recommendations from the project suggested that further research is needed in the following areas:

Comparing on-line and off-line provision | The study shows that written corrective feedback can be effectively provided on-line but further research, comparing on-line and off-line provision within a single study design, would be required to find out if one medium is more effective than the other.

Studying writers at other proficiency levels | The findings of this study are applicable to advanced proficiency L2 writers. Further research would be required to find out if the forms/structures targeted in this study can also be successfully treated with writers at other proficiency levels.

Helpfulness of the two types of feedback | The project found there was a difference in effect between the two types of feedback which indicates that further research should be done to explore the extent to which explanation (i.e. nature/cause of error) is more helpful than unexplained correction.