The Utility of Corrective Feedback in Improving Writing

Previous research has shown that corrective feedback on an assignment helps learners reduce their errors during the revision process. Does this finding constitute evidence that learning resulted from feedback? Differing answers play an important role in the ongoing debate over the effectiveness of error correction, suggesting a need for empirical investigation. In this study, two groups of EFL learners were asked to write an an in-class narrative. Their papers were collected, revised and returned to them in the next session. Half of the students had their errors underlined and used this feedback in the revision task while the other half did the same task without feedback. Later on, the students were identically taught for 9 sessions and finally were asked to write the same narrative they had produced before. On this measure, the two groups were virtually identical proving that successful error correction during revision is not a predicator of learning as the two groups differed dramatically on the former but were indistinguishable on the later.