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Effects of Written Corrective Feedback (CF) Essay

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Literature Review In this section, I will review current literature about written CF. I will start with several definitions of written CF and CF’s possible facilitative role in language learning. Then, I will end this section with a review of previous studies done on the domain of CF. Definition of Written Corrective Feedback (CF) Written corrective feedback has been defined in some ways. In his controversial paper, Truscott (1996) defined it as “correction of grammatical errors for the purpose of improving a students’ ability to write accurately” (p.331), setting a focused parameter only on grammatical features of a piece of students’ writing. In a similar fashion, Ellis (2009, 2012) explained that feedback on writing has three different …show more content…

Therefore, from Polio’s perspective, different types of written CF proposed by Ellis are actually just one same thing: explicit error correction. Setting apart this slightly different ways of defining CF, one obvious similarity between them can be recognized: it concerns about linguistic accuracy of a piece of writing. Therefore, in this paper, written CF will be defined as corrections on linguistic errors. Following Ellis’s typology, I will also differentiate focused (corrections targeted only on limited types of errors, such as articles, preposition, et.) and unfocused/ comprehensive (corrections on every errors made in a writing) written CF to compare possible different effects they may have on learners’ writings. Written CF and Language Learning The facilitative role of written CF in language learning can be seen from at least two perspectives: focus-on-form (FoF) and the Noticing Hypothesis. The term focus-on-form was coined by Long (1991) to refer to an unplanned, quick attention shift from meaning to linguistic forms in a communicative activity. However, some researchers later on expanded Long’s version of FoF, allowing for some more variations: planned and unplanned FoF as well as reactive and pre-emptive FoF (Doughty and Williams, 1998; Ellis, Basturkmen, and Loewen, 2002). As a feedback to learners’ production, CF may serve as a reactive focus-on-form instrument that focuses their attention while being actively engaged in a task (Van Beuningen,

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