The effects of teacher direct and indirect corrective feedback on grammatical errors in the writings of 10th grade students at kim anh high school

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATESTUDIES PHÙNG THỊ BÍCH NGUYỆN THE EFFECTS OF TEACHER DIRECT AND INDIR

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE

STUDIES

PHÙNG THỊ BÍCH NGUYỆN

THE EFFECTS OF TEACHER DIRECT AND INDIRECT

CORRECTIVE FEEDBACK ON GRAMMATICAL ERRORS IN THE

Ảnh hưởng của hình thức phản hồi trực tiếp và gián tiếp của giáo viên đối với việc sửa các lỗi ngữ pháp trong bài viết của học sinh lớp 10 trường

HANOI - 2015

Firstly, I would like to express my gratitude to my supervisor, Ms Hoang ThiXuan Hoa, PhD for her helpful guidance, critical comments and enthusiastic support

I would not have been able to complete this thesis without her great encouragement

I am indebted to my colleagues for their valuable assistance for the pursuit andfulfillment of this course

My heartfelt thanks go to the students who willingly spent their time

participating in the study

Last but not least, I owe a great debt of gratitude to my beloved family

members and close friends, who always stand by me no matter what happens

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This study investigated the effects of teacher written direct and indirectcorrective feedback on 10th grade students‟ three types of grammatical errors, namelyverb tenses and forms, attitudinal adjectives and articles, in their writings Forty fivestudents were randomly assigned into three groups and received direct correctivefeedback, indirect corrective feedback and no feedback respectively Students in eachgroup produced three narrative paragraphs (a pretest, a revision, a post-test) Theresults of data analysis showed that both direct and indirect corrective feedback helpedparticipants reduce errors related to verbs and attitudinal adjectives from the pretest tothe post-test However, only direct feedback contributed to a significant reduction ofarticle errors from the pretest to the post-test Between group comparisons of the post-test results revealed that direct corrective feedback appears to be slightly moreeffective than indirect corrective feedback in helping participants reduce errors related

to verbs and attitudinal adjectives In addition, the effect brought about by direct andindirect feedback on reducing article errors compared to the control group was notstatistically significant The findings are discussed in the context of the related

literature and areas of future research are suggested.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements i

Abstract ii

List of Tables vi

List of Figures vii

List of Abbreviations vii

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Statement of the problem and rationale of the study 1

1.2 Aims and objectives of the study 3

1.3 Significance of the study 3

1.4 Scope of the study 4

1.5 Organization of the paper 4

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Approaches to the teaching of L2 writing 5

2.1.1 Product approach 5

2.1.2 Process approach 6

2.2 Grammatical errors in L2 writing 7

2.3 Feedback in L2 Writing 8

2.3.1 Definition 8

2.3.2 Types of feedback 9

2.3.2.1 Direct Corrective Feedback 9

2.3.2.2 Indirect Corrective Feedback 10

2.3.3 Review on studies about feedback issues 10

2.3.3.1 The effectiveness of corrective feedback 10

2.3.3.2 The impacts of direct and indirect corrective feedback 12

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 3.1 Setting 15

3.2 Research method 17

3.3 Participants 15

3.4 Data collection 16

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3.4.1 Data collection instruments 16

3.4.2 Data collection procedure 17

3.5 Data analysis 20

CHAPTER 4: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 4.1 Pretest results 22

4.1.1 Verb errors in the pretest 22

4.1.2 Errors of attitudinal adjectives in the pretest 23

4.1.3 Errors of articles in the pretest 24

4.2 Post-test results 25

4.2.1 Answer to the first research question 25

4.2.1.1 Verb tenses and forms 25

4.2.1.2 Attitudinal adjectives 27

4.2.1.3 Articles 29

4.2.1.4 Summary of the results and discussion 31

4.2.2 Answer to the second research question 32

4.2.2.1 Verb tenses and forms 33

4.2.2.2 Attitudinal adjectives 34

4.2.2.3 Articles 36

4.2.2.4 Summary of the results and discussion 37

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION 5.1 Summary of findings 38

5.2 Limitations of the study and suggestions for further studies 39

5.3 Implications 39

REFERENCES

APPENDICES:

Appendix 1: Placement Test

Appendix 2: Pre-test

Appendix 3: Post-test

Appendix 4: Pretest result

Appendix 5: Post-test result

Appendix 6: Students‟ writing samples

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LIST OF TABLES

Table 3.1- Example of direct corrective feedback and indirect corrective feedbackTable 3.2.: Summary of data collection procedure Table 4.1- Descriptives (Test 1

- Verb)

Table 4.2 - Test of Homogeneity of Variances (Test 1 - Verb)

Table 4.3 - ANOVA (Test 1 - Verb)

Table 4.4 - Descriptives (Test 1 – Adj)

Table 4.5 - Test of Homogeneity of Variances (Test1 - Adj)

Table 4.6 - ANOVA (Test1 - Adj)

Table 4.7 - Descriptives (Test1 - Article)

Table 4.8 - Test of Homogeneity of Variances (Test1 - Article)

Table 4.9 - ANOVA (Test1 - Article)

Table 4.10 - Paired Samples Statistics (Pair 1 – DF - Verb)

Table 4.11 - Paired Samples Test (Pair 1 – DF - Verb)

Table 4.12 - Paired Samples Statistics (Pair 2- IF - Verb)

Table 4.13 - Paired Samples Test (Pair 2 – IF - Verb )

Table 4.14 - Paired Samples Statistics (Pair 3 – NF - Verb)

Table 4.15 - Paired Samples Test (Pair 3 – NF – Verb )

Table 4.16 - Paired Samples Statistics (Pair 4 – DF – Adj)

Table 4.17 - Paired Samples Test (Pair 4 – DF – Adj)

Table 4.18 - Paired Samples Statistics (Pair 5 – IF – Adj)

Table 4.19 - Paired Samples Test (Pair 5 – IF – Adj)

Table 4.20 - Paired Samples Statistics (Pair 6- NF – Adj)

Table 4.21 - Paired Samples Test (Pair 6 - NF – Adj)

Table 4.21 - Paired Samples Test (Pair 6 - NF – Adj)

Table 4.22 - Paired Samples Statistics (Pair 7- DF – Article)

Table 4.23 - Paired Samples Test (Pair 7- DF – Article)

Table 4.24 - Paired Samples Statistics (Pair 8 - IF – Article)

Table 4.25 - Paired Samples Test (Pair 8 – IF – Article)

Table 4.26 - Paired Samples Statistics (Pair 9 – NF – Article)

Table 4.27 - Paired Samples Test (Pair 9 – NF – Article)

Table 4.28 - Descriptives (Test 2 – Verb)

Table 4.29 - Test of Homogeneity of Variances (Test 2 – Verb)Table 4.30- ANOVA (Test 2 – Verb)

Table 4.31 - Multiple Comparisons (Test 2 – Verb)

Table 4.32 - Descriptives (Test 2 - Adj)

Table 4.33 - Test of Homogeneity of Variances (Test 2 - Adj)Table 4.34 - ANOVA (Test 2 - Adj)

Table 4.35 - Multiple Comparisons (Test 2 – Adj)

Table 4.36 - Descriptives (Test 2 – Article)

Table 4.37 - Test of Homogeneity of Variances (Test 2 – Article)Table 4.38 - ANOVA (Test 2 – Article)

Table 4.39 - Multiple Comparisons (Test 2 – Article)

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 3.1: Process of setting up groups

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

EFL: English as Foreign Language

ESL: English as Second Language

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Statement of the problem and rationale of the study

Obviously, writing plays an important role in communication because apartfrom speaking writing enables people to express their feelings and thoughts They use

it to define themselves, clarify their knowledge and their ideas, to understand theproblems that may face them as well as to find solutions for such problems Being so,writing is a means for self-actualization What people learn about themselves anddevelop within themselves through writing can help them to realize their individualpotential and to achieve potential goals (Hughey, et al, 1983)

In the field of second and foreign language learning and teaching, writing hasbeen seen as essential integral part of any language syllabus as learning to writeeffectively seems to be of prime importance Writing also enhances languageacquisition because learners experiment with words, sentences, and large chunks ofwriting to communicate their ideas effectively and to reinforce grammar andvocabulary they are learning in class (Bello, 1997) It helps to consolidate learning torender it available for use in other areas such as listening, speaking and reading(Mohamed, 2000)

In spite of the importance of writing, it is one of the most difficult languageskills to master According to Richards and Renandya (2002), the difficulty lies notonly in generating and organizing ideas, but also in translating these ideas into readabletext They argue that the skills involved in writing are highly complex, and learnershave to pay attention to higher level skills of planning and organizing as well as lowerlevel skills of spelling, punctuation, word choice, and so on The difficulty becomeseven more pronounced if student writers are at a low level of language proficiency

In Vietnam, of four skills that students learn in the subject of English, muchattention has been paid to developing writing skill In 2005, the Ministry of Educationand Training decided to reform the structure of the English test in Vietnam NationalHigh School Graduation Examination 2015 with more emphasis on the writing skill.Accordingly, apart from multiple choice grammar questions, students were asked towrite a short paragraph However, the result of the exam indicates that students‟

writing performance was generally poor as a large number of students could hardly dothe task Regarding students‟ attitude towards learning writing, according to Le (2008)(as cited in Pham (2009), only 6.9% of students wanted to learn writing When askedabout the reality of English writing at a specialized high school in the Mekong Delta,teachers reported that most of the students had problems with their writing such as (1)students have few opportunities to respond to teacher feedback thoughtfully andcritically, (2) their written texts contain a lot of grammatical inaccuracies and (3) theyhave negative attitudes toward writing in English It can be seen that the teaching andlearning writing English in Vietnam seems to face considerable difficulties.

Given the importance of writing in communication and in the field of EFLlearning and teaching, the difficulties facing learners in developing their writing abilityover time in EFL contexts, a lot of research has been conducted in order to explore theeffects of various techniques on helping ELF learners become better writers, especiallythe impact teacher feedback on students‟ writings However, the controversy over theeffectiveness of corrective feedback remains unresolved According to the mostextreme views, such as Truscott (2007), corrective feedback is seen as not onlyineffective but also potentially harmful In contrast, a number of L2 researchers andpractitioners (e.g Bitchener and Knoch, 2008; Chandler, 2003; Ferris, 2002; Sheen,2007) claim that corrective feedback is of value in promoting greater grammaticalaccuracy Also, there have been studies that examined the relative effectiveness ofvarying feedback types, and direct and indirect corrective feedback has received dueattention of researchers To date, studies examining the effects of direct and indirectfeedback on L2 learners‟ writing have yielded mixed results Furthermore, in Vietnam,there is little research addressing the issue Especially, most previous studies haveparticipants who are university students, and hardly any studies whose participants arehigh school students can be found

The above-mentioned reasons are the incentive for the researcher to conduct a

study on “The effects of teacher direct and indirect corrective feedback on

School” The results of the study are expected to make a contribution to the ongoing

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debate about the issue and to help the researcher to use corrective feedback moreeffectively in the teaching of writing.

1.2 Aims and objectives of the study

The current study aims at investigating the effects of teacher direct and indirectcorrective feedback on grammatical errors in the writings of 10th grade students at KimAnh High School

In order to achieve the aims, the study seeks to find the answer to the followingresearch questions:

1 Do teacher written direct corrective feedback and indirect corrective feedbackhelp 10th grade students at Kim Anh High School to reduce grammatical errors in writingfrom an initial task to a new task?

2 If so, which kind of feedback (direct corrective feedback or indirect corrective feedback) is more effective?

1 Teacher direct corrective feedback and indirect corrective feedback havesignificant effect on helping 10th grade students at Kim Anh High School to reducegrammatical errors in writing from an initial task to a subsequent task

2 Teacher direct corrective feedback is more effective

1.3 Significance of the study

Findings of this study will contribute to the discussion about whether or notcorrective feedback is effective and helpful in helping students reduce grammaticalerrors in their subsequent writings

Unlike some previous studies which did not have a control group, this study willinvolve a treatment group receiving both teacher written indirect and direct correctivefeedback and a control group receiving no corrective feedback

This study will also focus on three grammatical errors frequently made by EFLstudents, which is different from several previous studies that were either too broad byaddressing too many areas of error or too specific by focusing only on one error

As far as the teaching of writing is concerned, the study will also contribute tothe practice of teaching writing in EFL context Findings of this study might be ofinterest to foreign language writing teachers and researchers, especially those atsecondary and high schools They may have better understanding of the effects ofteacher direct and indirect corrective feedback on students‟ writings; thence have moresuitable feedback strategies to help their students.

1.4 Scope of the study

The study is restricted to explore the effects of two strategies of feedback, directcorrective feedback and indirect corrective feedback on grammatical errors made by

10th grade students In addition, only three targeted grammatical errors were in thisresearch They are the common types of grammatical errors and the ones that occurredmost frequently during the first writing task, including verb tenses and forms,attitudinal adjectives and article usage

Regarding the sample of the research, the participants were only selected from

10th grade students at Kim Anh High School in the school year of 2014-2015

1.5 Organization of the paper

The study includes five chapters as follows:

Chapter 1 (Introduction) presents the problem and the rationale, the aims andobjectives, the scope and the significance of the study

Chapter 2 (Literature review) provides the theoretical background of the study andreviews related studies

Chapter 3 (Methodology) describes the participants, the instruments and the procedures

to be employed to conduct the study

Chapter 4 (Results and Discussion) answers the research questions with datapresentation, data analysis and the comparison among the finding themselves and theassumptions discussed in the Literature Review

Chapter 5 (Conclusion) summarizes the main issues discussed in the study, thelimitations of the research and some suggestions for further study

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CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter sheds lights on the literature review of the study, specifically someapproaches in teaching wiring, grammatical errors and teacher corrective feedback.Firstly, an overview of approaches in teaching writing will be provided Secondly,grammatical errors will be discussed Finally, a closer look will be cast into teachercorrective feedback by outlining the main types of feedback, briefly reviewing mainprevious research on the effectiveness of feedback and summarizing the key findings

of main studies

2.1 Approaches to the teaching of L2 writing

There have been a number of ways of teaching writing However, the two mostcommonly and popularly known at the moment are the product-based approach and theprocess-oriented approach (Nunan, 1995)

2.1.1 The product approach

The product approach emerged as a combination of structural linguistics andbehaviorist learning theory, which was popular in the 1960s (Silva, 1990) Productapproach is the traditional approach to teaching writing which focuses at the result ofthe act of composition The writing teachers who subscribe to the product approach aremore concerned to see what a final piece of writing will be like and measure it againstcriteria of vocabulary use, grammar use, and medical considerations such as spellingand punctuations, as well as content and organization (Brown, 1994) Students in theclasses adopting the product approach typically are given writing models to imitatebefore they are evaluated by their teachers (Ferris and Hedgcock, 2005) and writing istaught through four stages, which are familiarization, controlled writing, guided writingand free writing

Since the focus in the product approach is on form, it is easy to use with largeclasses It is also easier to mark compositions because the teacher can easily direct his

or her attention to the form while correcting This approach is useful for situationswhere the emphasis on form is important or where the focus on structure is the main

target It has been widely used and teachers are quite familiar with it It might also besuitable for lower level learners because it helps them correct and eliminate their errors(Tribble, 1996)

However, product approach has a number of limitations First, as Ferris andHedgcock (2005) explain, this approach focuses on the writing structure and use ofvocabulary as the main indicators of writing development, neglecting the writingprocesses that students go through in writing (pre-writing, drafting, revising andediting) Second, it may create problems as it restricts the teaching of writing tosyntactic and grammatical accuracy, thus limiting students‟ understanding of goodwriting (Hyland, 2003) Third, the focus on grammar skills has not proved to beeffective in improving writing ability and many researchers reject the emphasis ongrammar, arguing that it has little to do with the act of writing (Zamel, 1976) WhileHinkel and Fotos (2002) believe that grammar teaching can be helpful and productive

in ESL and EFL writing classrooms, other studies take the opposite view Hudson(2001) argues that to prove that teaching grammar improves writing, further researchneeds to be carried out Another weakness in the approach lies in the assumption thatgood writing can be achieved by applying certain functional rules In fact, writing ismuch more than that (O‟Hare, 1973) Fourth, it restricts students‟ creativity as it relies

on imitation (Hyland, 2003) Fifth, the use of language in this approach is restricted tofixed patterns that are learned by imitating other models (Pincas, 1962)

2.1.2 The process approach

The process approach came into existence in reaction to product approachpedagogies (Miller, 1991) This approach leads students to the phase of a finished textpublication as it goes beyond linguistic knowledge to focus on linguistic skills andinvolves identifiable stages (Merriwether, 1997) Reid (1993) describes writing as amulti-stage process Goldstein and Carr (1996) refer to the process of writing as arange of strategies that include prewriting, planning, drafting and revising (Hedge,

2005, as cited in Mohamed, 2013 ) explains that the process of composing a text goesthrough different stages of revision, editing and generating such as being motivated to

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write, getting ideas together, planning and outlining, making notes, making a first draft,revising, editing and getting ready for publication (Hedge, 2005, as cited in Mohamed,

2013 )

Freeman and Freeman (2004) identify a number of advantages in the processapproach First, it motivates students to deliver their own messages and becomecreative Second, it involves teachers and students in responses to texts through peerfeedback and discussions Third, it deals with mistakes in writing skills such as spellingand grammar through teacher-student conferencing Fourth, it naturally moves writingfrom invention to convention (i.e writing becomes a practice of a set of cognitiveprocess instead of a demonstration of linguistic knowledge) However, the processapproach has some limitations First, it is time-consuming, especially with largeclasses Second, teacher-student conferences could be difficult to schedule due to timepressure Third, it requires a great deal of marking Fourth, it might discourage studentswho are not familiar with the process writing as they may consider revision as failure(Corpuz, 2011 )

2.2 Grammatical errors in L2 writing

Making errors is the most natural thing in the world and it is evidently attached

to the human beings (Beuningen, 2010) A number of experts in linguistics havepresented various definitions of error Among them, Norrish (1983) considers error as asystematic deviation, when a learner has not learnt something and consistently gets itwrong Ellis (1994) also defines error as a deviation from the norms of the targetlanguage To support this point, Ellis (1994) further clarifies that the standard writtendialect which is widely spread and used to teach non-native speakers is considered asthe norm particularly in language classroom settings In short, the norms of the targetlanguage are defined as the standard written dialect, and if so, error refers to thedeviation of that standard Tsui (1995) considers an error in the classroom as (1)something that is rejected by the teacher because it is wrong or inappropriate, (2)something that the teacher does not want or (3) something that does not conform to therules which the teacher lays down

Richard (1992) and Ellis (1994) have a quite similar view on distinguishingbetween a mistake and an error They explain that errors occur when learners do notknow the correct usage reflect gaps in learner knowledge whereas mistakes occurbecause, in particular instance, learners are unable to perform what they know reflectoccasional failures in performance In this sense, error refers to a deviation whichoccurs when language learners have not yet acquired correct usage of the targetlanguage.

Norrish‟s (1983) classified errors into three types, namely errors, mistakes andlapses An error is a systematic deviation which is made because the learner has notlearnt the correct form After the learner is taught the language form, he may be able touse it correctly or may not sometimes The inconsistent deviation is termed mistake.Another type of wrong usage, which is neither an error nor a mistake, is a lapse Alapse occurred due to lack of concentration, shortness of memory, fatigue, etc

Although there are different definitions and types of errors, in this paper theterm “errors” is used to refer to both “errors” made when the learners try to dosomething with the language they do not know and “mistakes” which occur when thestudents have learned something but have forgotten it or are careless in their writings

2.3 Feedback in L2 Writing

This section provides an overview of a variety of issues related to feedback inL2 writing Firstly, the definitions and importance of feedback are presented Next,different types of feedback are briefly introduced Finally, key issues in feedback andresearch studies are tackled, with emphasis on the effectiveness of different types ofcorrective feedback on students‟ writing

2.3.1 Definition

Feedback is defined as teacher's input to a writer's composition in the form ofinformation to be used for revision (Keh, 1990) Nicol and Macfarlane (2004) considerfeedback as information provided by teachers to help students trouble-shoot theirperformance The writer of this paper would define it as teacher's response to students'

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writing in the form of written comments that aim to help students improve their writingperformance.

Providing feedback is an essential function of teaching and learning (Beuningen,2010) The importance of feedback is also stressed by Cole and Chan (1994) Theystated that feedback may serve not only to let learners know how well they haveperformed but also to increase motivation and build a supportive classroom climate.Providing the right kind of feedback to the students can make a significant difference intheir achievement

2.3.2 Types of feedback

Although feedback is classified into some different types, this part only presentskey points about teacher direct corrective feedback and teacher indirect correctivefeedback, which are the focus of this study

2.3.2.1 Direct Corrective Feedback

Direct corrective feedback is defined as a type of correction that draws students'attention to the error and provides a solution to it (Bitchener and Ferris, 2012) In otherwords, the teacher shows students where their errors are and corrects these errors byproviding the correct form This type of correction takes a variety of forms such asa) cross-outs: when the teacher omits any wrong addition from students‟ original texts,b) rewrites: when the teacher rewrites a word, phrase or a sentence, providing thecorrect spelling, structure or form on students‟ original texts and

c) additions: when the teacher adds any missing items on students‟ original texts (e.g.

prefix, suffix, article, preposition, word, etc)

Direct corrective feedback aims to help students edit their writing and improvetheir performance in future tasks (Bitchener and Ferris, 2012) Ferris (2002) argues that

it is useful in treating errors of prepositions and other issues of idiomatic lexis She alsoclaims that it is useful in the final stages of the writing process to help students focus

on the remaining errors in their texts and refer to them in future tasks Students'linguistic proficiency is important to determine the amount of direct correctivefeedback they receive as advanced learners are more likely to benefit from it

2.3.2.2 Indirect Corrective Feedback

Indirect corrective feedback refers to situations when the teacher marks thaterrors have been made but does not supply the correct forms, requiring the learners todiagnose and correct their errors (Lee, 2005) When giving indirect correctivefeedback the teacher underlines, circles or highlights errors on students' original texts

to indicate the location of these errors without correcting them Students are asked tostudy their errors and correct them (Ferris, 2002) In other words, indirect correctivefeedback emphasizes the role of students in understanding and correcting their errorsrather than being provided with the corrections

Indirect feedback is applied by underlining students' writing errors so thatstudents understand that there is a problem that should be 'fixed.' Teachers may uselines, circles or highlighting to indicate the location of errors They also need to decidehow explicit indirect feedback should be based on the goals they want to achieve byproviding feedback

2.3.3 Review on studies about feedback issues

This section briefly reviews main studies about corrective feedback According

to their research issues, studies are divided into two major groups namely theeffectiveness of corrective feedback and the impacts of direct and indirect feedback

2.3.3.1 The effectiveness of corrective feedback

The discussion regarding the effectiveness of feedback has been prominent inrecent years Attitudes toward corrective feedback have evolved from the strictavoidance of errors and thus quick and direct error correction before the 1960s, to thecondemnation of error correction as something harmful in the late 1960s, and to a morecritical view of the necessity and value of error correction in the 1970s and 1980s Thecontroversy over the topic of corrective feedback, however, remains unresolved in the1990s (Lee, 1997, cited in Khatib & Bijani, 2012, p 103)

The heated debate on the effectiveness of corrective feedback in L2 writing wasinitiated in 1996 in an article by Truscott (1996), who argued that grammar correctionshould be avoided in L2 writing and stressed that teachers should not correct grammar

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because of its potentially harmful impacts He presented three arguments against errorcorrection The first was that the learning process was too complex to believe thatstudents could improve through providing them with corrective feedback Secondly,giving corrective feedback to students at a time when they were not ready to learn aspecific language form or structure was barely possible Thirdly, he argued thatwhatever knowledge students acquired as a result of correction would dissipate over ashort period These arguments led to an increase of research focusing on theeffectiveness of corrective feedback on students‟ writing.

Some researchers (e.g., Cohen and Robbins, 1976; Kepner, 1991; Sheppard,1992; Polio et al 1998) also claim that grammar corrections do not have a positiveeffect on the development of L2 writing accuracy According to the most extremeviews, such as Truscott (2007), corrective feedback is seen as not only ineffective butalso potentially harmful

In contrast, a number of L2 researchers and practitioners (e.g Bitchener andKnoch, 2008; Chandler, 2003; Ferris, 2002; Sheen, 2007) claim that correctivefeedback is of value in promoting greater grammatical accuracy For example, Ferris(1995, 1999, 2003, 2004) have rejected the argument raised by Truscott with respect tothe ineffectiveness of implementing written corrective feedback on L2 learners‟writing Ferris (1999) argues that Truscott‟s stance against grammar correction andineffectiveness of corrective feedback on fostering L2 learners‟ writing ability ispremature She claims that corrective feedback is an integral constituent of L2 writinginstruction Furthermore, it is claimed that corrective feedback provides L2 learnersopportunities to notice the gaps in their L2 knowledge which in turn leads them to testinter-language hypotheses and engage in meta-linguistic reflection which results inprompting L2 writing (Van Beuningen, 2010) Ferris also argues that correctivefeedback is an inseparable issue in writing pedagogy and L2 researchers andpractitioners are assumed to focus on questions with respect to effectiveimplementation of corrective feedback

Chandler (2003) also argued that students who received corrective feedbackthen revised their writing improved over time

In their studies, (Ashwell, 2000; Ferris, 1997; Ferris & Roberts, 2001; Sachs &Polio, 2007) also found that participants whose errors were corrected were able tomake more accurate revisions than those who did not receive any corrective feedback.

However, results from studies investigating the effect of corrective feedback onsubsequent writing (e.g Chandler, 2003; Kepner 1991; Polio et al., 1998; Semke,1984), are inconclusive

2.3.3.2 The impacts of direct and indirect corrective feedback

There are some studies that examined the relative effectiveness of varyingfeedback types, and direct and indirect corrective feedback has received due attention

of researchers To date, studies examining the effect of direct and indirect feedback onL2 learners‟ writing have yielded mixed results

It has been claimed that students would benefit more from indirect correctivefeedback because they have to engage in a more profound form of language processing

as they are self-editing their output (e.g Ferris, 1995) However, this hypothesis couldnot yet be confirmed since results from studies exploring the relative effectiveness ofdirect and indirect corrective feedback (e.g Chandler, 2003; Ferris et al., 2000;Frantzen, 1995; Lalande, 1982, Robb et al., 1986) are inconclusive

A study by Lalande (1982) showed that students who received indirectcorrective feedback outperformed students in a direct correction group Pham (2009)also concluded that indirect feedback was more effective than direct feedback inhelping reduce students‟ grammatical errors significantly Frantzen (1995) and Robb et

al (1986) on the other hand, found that direct and indirect corrective feedback wereequally effective A study by Ferris et al (2000) revealed yet another pattern; whereasindirect correction proved to be most effective in improving students‟ accuracy insubsequent writing, students who received direct feedback made the most accuraterevisions Finally, as opposed to Lalande (1982) and Ferris et al (2000), Chandler(2003) found that direct corrective feedback resulted in the largest accuracy gains, notonly in revisions but also in subsequent writing

Van Beuningen et al (2012) investigated the effectiveness of direct and indirectcorrective feedback on students‟ overall accuracy, grammatical accuracy, non-

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grammatical accuracy, grammatical complexity and lexical diversity in L2 writing Theresult of the study showed that direct and indirect feedback was useful in improvinggrammatical and non-grammatical accuracy as both experimental groups outperformedthe control groups For overall accuracy, the effect of direct corrective feedback wasgreater than indirect corrective feedback For grammatical complexity and lexicaldiversity, Van Beuningen et al (2012) wanted to examine Truscott‟s (2007) claim thatcorrective feedback resulted in simplified writing However, no significant differencewas found between all groups in structural complexity or lexical diversity.

While a lot of studies make claims about the effectiveness and ineffectiveness ofcorrective feedback, the results of studies are controversial

Studies that did include a control group and investigated the short-termeffectiveness of error correction (e.g Ashwell, 2000; Ferris, 1997; Ferris & Roberts,2001; Sachs & Polio, 2007), found that participants whose errors were corrected wereable to make more accurate revisions than those who did not receive any correctivefeedback In contrast, results from studies investigating the effect of correctivefeedback on subsequent writing (e.g Chandler, 2003; Kepner 1991; Polio et al., 1998;Semke, 1984), are inconclusive Methodological shortcomings might explain thecontradicting findings of these studies

Semke (1984), who compared the effects of error correction to the effects ofcontent-focused comments, found that error correction had no effect on students‟accuracy and a negative effect on their written fluency However, in his research,groups received different treatments in terms of time Students in the content-focusedcondition had twice as much time to produce new material than students receivingcorrective feedback Therefore, it might be the case that these results could beexplained by the different amount of writing practice between the two treatmentgroups

Polio et al.‟s (1998) study showed that both students who received correctivefeedback and students who did not were able to improve their accuracy over time.However, students in the experimental condition only produced half as many journalentries as the control group did, because of the editing activities they had to perform

Thus, it can be seen that the control group have more practicing opportunities and as aresult, they might have better performance Perhaps, that is why the beneficial effects

of corrective feedback could not be significant

Kepner (1991) did not find any significant differences in error-counts between agroup that received error corrections and another group that received message-relatedcomments However, the participants in his research were not required to do anythingwith the corrective feedback they received Hence, it remains unclear whether thestudents processed the feedback that they had received or not

In Semke (1984) and Polio et al.‟s (1998) studies the fact that less time wasallocated to writing practice in the error correction condition than in the controlcondition could explain why no positive effects of corrective feedback were found

In another experiment in which college learners who were required to write fiveessays that were collected every second week, Chandler (2003) found that getting theteacher to correct or to underline for learner self-correction resulted in a significantimprovement in both accuracy and fluency in subsequent writing of the same type.Nevertheless, direct correction led to the greatest accuracy in comparison with indirectcorrections including underlining, description and underlining with description Yet, aslearners were receiving different types of feedback in rotation, learning would haveoccurred between treatments Learners who received the direct correction treatment lastmight perform very differently from those who had received it first For example,having experimented with the three other feedback types, learners alerted to the factthat they should continue paying attention to their errors In other words, the directcorrection type might have proven so effective because it was combined with otherfeedback treatments This study should be conducted with four different groups,working with the same teacher but without alternating treatment in order to see theeffectiveness of direct correction

In short, although there has been a great deal of arguments for and against theefficacy of implementing corrective feedback on enhancing L2 writing, yet there islittle available to reach to a firm conclusion Therefore, more studies should be conduct

to investigate different aspects of corrective feedback

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CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 3.1 Setting

The study is conducted in 10th grade of Kim Anh High School which is located

in a rural area of Soc Son District, a developing suburb of Hanoi In order to get theadmission to the school, students have to take a high school entrance exam deliveredannually by Department of Education and Training of Hanoi However, theexamination consists of only two tests, including Mathematics and Literature test Itmeans that all students are not required to take any tests of English in order to enterKim Anh High School That is why a number of students do not pay adequate attention

to learning English at secondary school, and consequently their English level is lowerthan what is expected for 10th grade students

At Kim Anh High School, students have a 45-minute period of writing aftereach two weeks The writing lessons generally follow activities given in the textbook

“Tieng Anh 10” provided by the Ministry of Education and Training

3.2 Method

To investigate the effects of teacher direct and indirect corrective feedback onparticipants‟ grammatical accuracy in writing, a quasi-experimental study with oneindependent variable and one dependent variable was employed

The independent variable in this study was the teacher written correctivefeedback strategies This variable comprised three levels namely direct feedback (DF),indirect feedback (IF) and no feedback (NF) The dependent variable was participants‟writing grammatical accuracy as measured by the percentage of errors in the writingtask 1 (pretest) and writing task 2 (post-test)

3.3 Participants

The participants of this study were 45 students from ten 10th grade classes Inorder to choose participants who are representatives of the desired population, thesestudents were selected from 10 classes based on their English scores More

specifically, 63 students having English score at 10th grade of about from 7.0 to 7.5coming from 10 classes were selected Because their English scores were based ondifferent tests designed by different teachers, there might be a difference in the Englishproficiency of these participants Therefore, a placement test for these 63 students wasnecessary to select students with quite similar level of English proficiency As a rule,students of Kim Anh High School have to take a placement test of English, Math,Literature, Physics, Chemistry after 10th grade so that they can be placed into suitablegroups corresponding to their levels Therefore, the researcher used the results of thistest to select 45 participants from these 63 students More specifically, only 59 out of

63 students selected sat for the English test In addition, the 14 test takers whose scoreswere significantly higher or and lower than the others‟ were not invited to participate

in the study As a result, 45 students were selected

All participants have been learning English as a compulsory subject at schoolfor 7 years During the time of the study, participants were having summer vacationand were not taking any English classes at school

3.4 Data collection

3.4.1 Data collection instruments

Three data collection instruments, including an initial writing test (pretest), arevision of the initial task and a subsequent writing task (post-test), were employed inthe study

Two writing tasks were used in the experiment Both initial task (pretest) and asubsequent writing task (post-test) were of a similar type – writing a narrative about anembarrassing situation on the basis of a series prompts given Students were instructed

to use about 100-120 words for each writing task These writing tasks were alsodesigned in such a way that the content was unproblematic for all students, since theaim of this study was to elicit the effect of the direct and indirect corrective feedback

on grammatical accuracy The topic of the two writing tasks was similar because alearner‟s language proficiency may not be the only factor influencing students‟performance on a particular writing task Research on writing assessment showed that

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other factors, such as a task‟s topic, might also contribute to a writer‟s score(Schoonen, 2005) Therefore, participants were given two different writing tasks of asame topic so that topic influence factor can be controlled.

Before having been used officially, the tests were piloted among 6 participantswho were of similar backgrounds as those in the official study

3.4.2 Data collection procedure

The data collection procedure consists of 6 main steps presented as follow:

Step 1: Selecting participants

The researcher informed the teachers of the aims of the research, what theparticipants were expected to do to select students who had the English score at grade

10th of 7.0 -7.5

Step 2: Administering placement test and setting up groups

To enhance the equivalence of student starting performance level of writingamong the groups at the beginning of this study, all participants took an English testwhich assessed participants‟ overall language proficiency After this test, 45 studentsout of 59 students whose test score were not significantly different were selected

Based on the performance level of the placement test, the students wereclassified into low to moderate and moderate to high score groups Students were thenrandomly assigned in three different groups, including (Direct corrective feedback(group 1) and indirect corrective feedback (group 2) and control group with nofeedback (group 3), using a stratified random sampling technique After this stratifiedrandom assignment, each treatment group had 15 students consisting of students drawnfrom the low to moderate English proficiency level group and students from themoderate to high proficiency level group These steps are outlined in Figure 3.1.In thisway, it was expected that each group would have similar compositions of students withsimilar levels of English

Total samples

(45 students)

Classifying participants according to their test score

GROUP A Low to moderate score (23 students)

GROUP B Moderate to high score (22 students)

Random assignment

to groups

Group 1 (15 students) Direct feedback

- 8 students (Group A)

- 7 students (Group B)

Group 2 (15 students) Indirect feedback

- 8 students (Group A)

- 7 students (Group B)

Group 3 (15 students)

No feedback

- 7 students (Group A)

- 8students (Group B)

Figure 3.1: Process of setting up groups

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Step 3: Delivering the initial test

Before administering the first writing task, the researcher introduced the task toensure all participants had a comparable background knowledge on the topic Then allparticipants were required to write a narrative of about 100-120 words about anembarrassing situation, using the prompts given They had 35 minutes to complete thetask

Step 4: Giving written corrective feedback

A teacher of English who had been trained in feedback strategies providedfeedback on the paragraphs written by students The first experimental group receiveddirect corrective feedback, the second experimental group received indirect feedback,and the control group was given no corrective feedback However, for ethical purposes,students in the control group were provided with general comments about their writing,such as “please keep up the good work.”

While direct corrective feedback took the form of identifying both the error andthe target form (c.f example 1), indirect corrective feedback only consisted of anindication of the error and its category (c.f example 2)

Table 3.1.: Example of direct corrective feedback and indirect corrective feedback

Example 1: Direct corrective feedback He play football yesterday

playedExample 2: Indirect corrective feedback (Art) I read a interesting book last week

( Art = article error)

Step 5: Asking participants to revise their writings

In the second session, participants received direct, indirect or no feedbackrespectively, depending on the group students were assigned to The first part of thesecond session was spent on separately instructing each group on what was expectedfrom them The direct feedback and indirect feedback group were asked to copy theirtext revising all errors the teacher gave feedback on Students in the Indirect groupwere furthermore instructed on the meaning and used of the error codes in their text if

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necessary to make sure they all understand the codes The students in control groupwere instructed to read over their writing carefully and search for elements in need ofrevision and then revise them All treatment and control groups were given the sameamount of time (35 minutes) to carry out their assignment.

Step 6: Administering the subsequent test (post-test)

In the third session, students of all groups were asked to write a paragraph of thesame type and topic as the initial task but about a different event The time allowed forthe subsequent task was similar to that for the initial test and revision, 35 minutes

Summary of data collection procedure:

The design of the experiment and division of feedback treatment are outlined below

Table 3.2: Summary of data collection procedure

Providing direct feedback, indirect feedback and Direct In direct No

no feedback for experimental and control group feedback feedback feedback

respectively

Post-treatment stage

Asking students of experimental and control x x x

group to revise their writing basing on the

feedback they received

Asking students of experimental and control x x x

group to write a new task

3.5 Data analysis

Upon the completion of data collection, quantitative analysis was conducted.First, all errors were counted and entered into the comparison tables prepared by theresearcher These tables recorded all targeted grammatical errors on student‟s writings

in all the three stages and all three groups The measurement of grammatical accuracy

in the writing tasks was the error rate that was calculated as the percentage of incorrectusage of each targeted grammatical errors (verb tenses and forms, attitudinal adjectivesand article usage) out of the obligatory instances For example, five incorrect uses ofverb tenses and forms from ten obligatory occasions gave the error rate of 50% Theincrease or decrease of error rate reflects the decrease or increase of grammaticalaccuracy respectively

The second step in data analysis was to conduct statistical tests with SPSSstatistical software

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CHAPTER 4: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

This chapter concentrates on the presentation, interpretation and discussion ofthe data In the first part of the chapter, data that help answer each research questionwill be presented In the next part of the chapter, the findings of the research questionswill be gathered and discussed

As explained earlier (see Chapter 3), the experiment had three groups,including two experimental groups, Group 1 (Group DF) receiving direct correctivefeedback and Group 2 (Group IF) receiving indirect corrective feedback, and onecontrol group – Group 3 (Group NF) which received no feedback Each group consists

of 15 participants Error rate was measured by calculating the percentage of incorrectusage of each targeted grammatical errors out of the obligatory instances Two types ofSPSS analysis were carried out to analyze the data, one-way ANOVA and pairedsamples t-test at the level of 0.05 significance

4.1 Pretest results

At the beginning of the step of data analysis, a one-way ANOVA was used totest for any initial between-group differences in error rate

4.1.1. Verb errors in the pretest

Table 4.1 – Descriptives (Test 1 – Verb)

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Table 4.3 – ANOVA (Test 1 – Verb)

The table 4.3 showed that there was no statistically significant difference

between groups in the pretest because the Sig value was greater than 0.05, ANOVA [F (2,42) =0.129, p=0.879].

4.1.2 Errors of attitudinal adjectives in the pretest

Table 4.4 – Descriptives (Test 1 – Adj)

Deviation Error Interval for Mean

Table 4.5 - Test of Homogeneity of Variances (Test 1 – Adj)

Table 4.6 – ANOVA (Test 1 – Adj)

As far as the errors of attitudinal adjectives are concerned, it can be seen from

the table 4.6 that the Sig value was larger than 0.05 Therefore, the error rate of the

groups were not significantly difference, ANOVA [F(2,42)=1.567, p=0.221]

4.1.3 Errors of articles in the pretest

Table 4.7 – Descriptives (Test 1 – Article)

Table 4.8 - Test of Homogeneity of Variances (Test 1 – Article)

Table 4.9 – ANOVA (Test 1 – Article)

Squares

The table 4.9 demonstrated no significant difference between groups in terms of

the rate of article errors in the pretest, [F(2,42)=0.000, p=1.000].

In short, results showed that there was no statistically significant differencebetween groups in terms of the error rate in the pretest Moreover, the task‟s topicproved not to have significant influence on students‟ writing performance Hence, anydifferences in error rate found later in the study cannot be ascribed to initial differencebetween treatment groups or task‟s topic factor

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4.2 Post-test results

4.2.1 Do teacher direct corrective feedback and indirect corrective feedback help students to reduce grammatical errors in writing from an initial task to a new task?

Firstly, the researcher examined the effects of the different feedback types oneach grammatical error category (verb tenses and forms, attitudinal adjectives andarticles) To answer the first research question, 9 paired-samples t-tests were used.These tests were used to compare the percentage of errors of each of the three groups

in the pretest (Test 1) and post-test (Test 2) Differences in the mean error rate betweenthe two tests indicated an increase or decrease in error rate, which reflected thegrammatical accuracy performance Details of the results and data analysis arediscussed below

Table 4.10 - Paired Samples Statistics (Pair 1 – DF - Verb)

Mean N Std Deviation Std Error Mean

Pair 1

Table 4.11 - Paired Samples Test (Pair 1 – DF –Verb)

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alpha value of 0.05, there was a significant difference in the first and secondpercentage of verb errors.

The table 4.10 reveals that the mean of the first test was 36.000 and the mean ofthe second test was 18.667 Therefore, it can be concluded that there was a significant

decrease in the percentage of verb errors from the pretest to the post-test

Despite the significant decrease in percentage of verb errors showed in the tableabove, the magnitude of the intervention‟s effect had not been revealed Therefore, theresearcher continued to calculate the effect size statistics Eta squared was 0.6

According to Cohen, 1988, with the eta squared value of 0.6 it can be concluded that

there was a moderate effect, with a substantial decrease in the percentage of verb errorsobtained before and after the intervention

Table 4.12 - Paired Samples Statistics (Pair 2 - IF - Verb)

Pair 2

Table 4.13 - Paired Samples Test (Pair 2 – IF - Verb)

tailed) Deviation Error Interval of the

Mean Difference

Lower Upper IF_Test1_Verb

decrease in the percentage of verb errors from Test 1 (M= 36.400, SD=14.029) to Test

2 [(M=26.6667, SD= 12.063), t(14) = 2.648, p<0.05] The eta-squared statistic (0.4)

indicated a small effect size It means that indirect corrective feedback also helpedlearners to reduce errors related to verb forms and types

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Table 4.14 - Paired Samples Statistics (Pair 3 – NF - Verb)

Mean N Std Deviation Std Error Mean

Pair 3

Table 4.15 - Paired Samples Test (Pair 3 – NF - Verb)

Deviation Mean Confidence

Interval of the Difference Lower Upper NF_Test1_Verb

NF_Test2_Verb

Regarding groups receiving no feedback, although the percentage of verb errors

decrease from Test 1 (M= 38.667, SD=15.305) to Test 2 [M=32.533, SD= 11.096), t(14) = 1.245, p>0.05], the decrease was not significant because the probability value

was larger than specified alpha value of 0.05 In other words, students receiving nocorrective feedback could not reduce their verb errors remarkably in the post-test

4.2.1.2 Attitudinal adjectives

For the attitudinal adjectives, as the tables below indicated, groups receiving anykinds of feedback, direct feedback, indirect feedback or no feedback, had aconsiderable reduction of the error rate in the post-test

Table 4.16 - Paired Samples Statistics (Pair 4 – DF – Adj)

Pair 4