Effectiveness of teachers' direct and indirect written corrective feedback provision strategies on enhancing students' writing achievement: Ethiopian university entrants in focus

Abstract

Written corrective feedback (hereafter WCF) has gained great emphasis from a considerable number of studies in second language (L2) writing history; however, an increasing number of previous studies have stressed its importance in helping learners develop their L2 writing abilities there are unresolved controversies regarding the significance and efficacy of various forms of written corrective feedback. Thus, this study was initiated to see the effects of teachers' written corrective feedback on university-entrant students' English language writing achievement. A quasi-experimental research design involving a test as a data-gathering tool was used. To that end, three intact freshman classes were selected and assigned into two experimental groups and one comparison group from a university in northwest Ethiopia. Test scores from self-descriptive paragraph writing were analyzed using a one-way ANCOVA, and the results showed that WCF has an influential role in improving university entrat learners' writing performance. Therefore, the findings from the study showed that both experimental groups performed better than the participants in the control group, indicating that both WCF provision strategies play vital roles in enhancing English language learners' writing performance as university entrants. Nevertheless, the study's findings revealed that statistically significant improvements in the writing proficiency of the study participants in both experimental groups were found the results confirmed that learners who received direct WCF along with metalinguistic explanations performed better than their peers in the indirect group who received indirect WCF. Consequently, it can be concluded that both direct and indirect WCF are crucial pedagogical strategies in improving learners' writing abilities, even though it was still found that direct WCF with a metalinguistic explanation was the most effective strategy in assisting EFL university entrants in improving their writing skills.

Keywords: Corrective feedback; Ethiopia; Sustained feedback; University entrants; Writing achievement; Written corrective feedback.