The Reaction of Three English Grammatical Structures to Different Types of Written Feedback

PhD Student of TEFL, English Department, Faculty of Foreign Languages and The available empirical evidence on the long-term efficacy of written corrections is limited to the studies that have investigated the effect of focused feedback on improving grammatical accuracy of two specific aspects of English articles. It is clear that focused corrections, which target only one or two grammatical error types at a time, lack ecological validity in writing courses. The aim of the present study is to investigate the reaction of different structures to corrections which enjoy more validity in writing classes. Using a pretest-posttest design, the long-term reaction of three features of English grammar (articles, the infinitive, and the present unreal conditional) to mid-focused and unfocused written feedback and revision were investigated. The results showed that on the delayed posttest, which was administered one month after the feedback treatment, the performance of the students in the experimental groups was not significantly different from the control group and that there were no significant absolute gains in any of the groups compared with pretest scores.