Individual differences and written corrective feedback : exploring the effects of direct and coded feedback on Chinese EFL learners' writing accuracy

Abstract

Written corrective feedback (WCF), despite its prevalence in L2 classrooms, has been and remains one of the most contentious issues in second language acquisition (SLA) and L2 writing research over the past two decades. The ongoing debate about the overall effectiveness of WCF or the effectiveness of certain WCF strategies has produced numerous empirical studies mainly oriented from the cognitive perspective. Given that the cognitive-oriented research focuses on group rather than individual learners, not much consensus had been reached on which type of feedback is most effective, and our knowledge about how individual learners make use of and benefit from feedback is still limited. This study, taking a sociocognitive perspective and employing a mixed-method research design (a quasi-experimental study and a multiple-case study), addresses these questions by investigating not only the overall effects of direct and coded WCF on students’ writing accuracy, but also how individual students process and utilize the feedback received and the individual learner factors and contextual factors which mediate their responses. Two teachers and their intact classes were involved in the quasi-experimental study, and four students of different proficiency levels from each of the two classes took part in the multiple-case study. Data include the students’ drafts of all writing tasks and tests, the teachers’ WCF in the four-round treatment sessions, semi-structured interviews with the case participants, classroom observation notes and audio-records, and teaching related documents. Although no significant differences between direct and coded WCF were found from the quasi-experimental study, the eight student cases exhibited great individual differences in terms of their responses to the two types of WCF. The with-in class and cross-class comparisons among the students revealed that they differed from each other in terms of (1) their abilities to use metacognitive operations to regulate cognitive processing and cognitive operations to facilitate their processing and generate revision operations, (2) their depth of processing, that is, to what extent they could notice and understand the WCF, (3) their use of other revision strategies to facilitate their processing, and (4) their revision operations. The findings suggested that individual students’ use of WCF not only involved their mental processing of the information, but also was mediated by the dynamic interactions between individual learner factors (encompassing prior metalinguistic knowledge, beliefs, motivation and goals) and contextual factors (including micro-level and macro-level contexts). The data also indicated the important role of students, as active agents, exerting volitional control over their processing and utilization of the type of WCF received. This study contributes to the current WCF research by taking a new sociocognitive perspective, jointly investigating the cognitive and social dimensions of WCF, to illustrate the complex, dynamic, and multifaceted nature of WCF activity. It also offers insights into individual students’ responses to WCF by highlighting the influences of the interactions among individual learner factors and contextual factors on their processing and utilization of feedback received. This enhances our understanding about the differential effects of direct and coded WCF.