Improving grammatical accuracy through using Written Corrective Feedback (WCF)

Abstract

English is of great significance in the world today not only as a lingua franca for daily communication but also as a tool for information exchange. Among the four essential skills (i.e. listening, speaking, reading and writing) of commanding a second language, writing is widely recognized as 'the most problematic' one from L2 learners' perspective (Schultz, 2011). As a result, large quantities of studies have tried to figure out efficient ways to improve different aspects of L2 learners' English writing skills, among which using written corrective feedback (WCF) to improve L2 learners' grammatical accuracy is a significant one. However, the effectiveness of this approach is still controversial according to previous research (e.g. Truscott, 1997, 2010; Bruton, 2009; Ferris, 2006, 2010 etc.). Further, although studies have provided some supportive evidence for the justification of the effectiveness of WCF, many of them could only be realized in a relatively 'pure' experimental environment and are too far away from the real classroom context (Lee, 2018). Therefore, the present research aims to fill this niche, namely, to put our designed written corrective feedback method into real classroom settings and testify to its effectiveness based on the principle of 'assessment for learning'.