The Possible Harmful Side Effects of CF

Referring back to Truscott’s (1996, 2004, 2007) claims that CF influences negatively on the structural complexity and lexical diversity in learners’ writing, the findings opposed these claims and found no difference between groups over time regarding their structural complexity. It was also noticed that the direct group wrote more complex sentences in their new pieces of wring during the immediate post-test than in the revision. Moreover, the exposure to CF methodologies showed no significant difference in lexical diversity between CF groups and the control group and no lexical diversity changes were noticed over time. The difference between experimental groups was seen during the revision and the immediate post-test, where the direct group produced more lexically complex texts. On the delayed post-test, the direct group showed significant increase in their lexical diversity compared to their lexical diversity during pre-test. The indirect group’s lexical diversity increased in the delayed post-test comparing to the revision and immediate post- test.

In summary, as it was explained in the previous sections, results showed that all the learners who had a chance to revise their writing products (i.e. students in the direct and indirect groups) produced fewer errors in their revisions than in their initial texts and the accuracy gains made by them turned to be significant. Moreover, comparison tests revealed that both learners who received direct correction and learners whose errors were indirectly corrected significantly outperformed learners who received general comments in the control group. Besides, the results showed a significant difference between the

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direct CF group and indirect CF group. In other words, the outcomes pointed out that direct CF has superior short-term effect on learners’ overall accuracy to the provision of indirect feedback.

In this study, not only the short-term efficacy of CF was aimed at exploring but also the long-term effectiveness of comprehensive CF. The findings showed that both direct and indirect CF proved to have long-term effect on student’s overall accuracy when they produced new pieces of writing. Tests of comparisons between groups yielded a significant difference between CF groups and the control group. Although there was no significant difference between direct CF group and indirect CF group, the results showed that indirect CF had positive effects on the subsequent written tasks.

Considering the CF responsiveness of different error types, the results revealed that grammatical errors and non-grammatical errors are amenable to CF and benefit from different types of corrections. Both direct and indirect CF groups improved their grammatical accuracy during the revision. This was obvious as learners from CF groups made fewer grammatical errors in their revised texts than the grammatical errors they made in pre-test. Comparison between groups showed significant difference between CF groups and control group regarding grammatical errors. The same results obtained when learners produced new written tasks one week after CF provision. The difference between direct and indirect CF groups did not reach significance. Based on the findings, both direct and indirect CF potentially yield short-term and long-term grammatical accuracy advantages, however, only indirect corrective feedback showed significance in the delayed post-test. The non-grammatical errors responded equally to direct and indirect CF methodologies during revision. The number of non-grammatical errors in learners’ revised drafts was fewer than it was in their initial writing. Between groups comparison showed the difference between both CF groups and the control group was significant during revision. Correspondingly, non-grammatical accuracy gains were visible both in immediate post-test and the delayed post-test. Receiving direct and indirect CF proved to be more beneficial than the control group. The delayed post-test results indicated large effect for the advantage of direct corrective feedback over indirect error correction. The possible avoidance of complex structure due to error correction also was tested. Results showed that no significant difference between direct CF group, indirect CF group and the control group. However, the findings indicated that there were significant differences located in direct CF group regarding their structural complexity. Direct CF

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students’ performance on the immediate post-test significantly differed from their performance on revision stage. In other words, direct CF learners’ writing during the immediate post-test (i.e. when writing new texts after a week of CF delivery) was structurally more complex than their writing on the revision stage.

Likewise, findings determined no significant difference found between direct CF group and the control group associated with lexical diversity in students’ revised drafts. Whereas, a significant difference was found between the two experimental CF groups on the revision stage; direct CF group produced lexically more complex texts than indirect CF group. The comparison tests between experimental CF groups and the control group showed no difference on the immediate post-test. The comparison tests conducted between direct and indirect CF groups, however, showed significant difference between them in the benefit of the direct group. Finally, the comparisons showed no significant differences between all groups on the delayed post-test. However, the results of the comparisons indicated that learners’ lexical diversity of the direct CF group was significantly improved on the delayed post-test comparing with their lexical diversity on the pre-test stage. Furthermore, lexical diversity of indirect CF group developed on the delayed post-test and reached significant differences comparing with the revision stage and the immediate post-test stage.

4.12. Concluding Remarks

The results showed significant effect of the two different types of corrective feedback - direct and indirect on students’ overall accuracy. It also showed how different types of corrective feedback impacted differently on different types of students’ errors - grammatical and non-grammatical errors. However, it remains unclear to which degree students’ overall accuracy are attributed to the corrective feedback. In addition, the findings of this research showed that learners’ structural complexity developed overtime. For instance, direct corrective feedback group wrote more complex sentences in their new texts than in their revision. This is probably because when they were implementing corrections were more conservative, but they felt encouraged to use more complexity on future pieces. The following chapter addresses these issues on how students reflect on their knowledge about errors and strategies for applying feedback, how they self-monitor their writing on subsequent texts, and how personal and contextual factors might influence their ability to benefit from written corrective feedback. A detailed qualitative analysis of learner’s accuracy performance over time along with quantitative accuracy

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measures in the previous chapters might give a clearer complete and accurate picture of the accuracy gains brought about by comprehensive written corrective feedback.

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