Abstract:
This study investigated the effects of two types of written feedback – direct corrective feedback (DCF) and metalinguistic explanation (ME) - on Iranian EFL learners’ implicit and explicit knowledge of English definite and indefinite articles. Assigned to three groups of DCF, ME, and control groups, the participants took four tests in three testing phases: pretest, posttest, and delayed posttest. Four testing instruments measured the two knowledge types: narrative writings, speeded dictation, untimed grammaticality judgment, and error correction tests. Results indicated that both treatments were effective in the immediate posttests. However, the ME proved to have longer lasting effects than the DCF as the improvement of both knowledge types were sustained after a three week period in the ME group. According to the obtained findings, it is argued that the description of the rules and the examples given explicitly in a ME handout might be more beneficial in promoting learners’ implicit and explicit knowledge of English articles than the DCF.
Machine summary:
The study reported below is intended to address this point by examining the differential effects of two CF types – direct corrective feedback (DCF) and metalinguistic explanation (ME) – on Iranian EFL learners’ implicit and explicit knowledge of English definite and indefinite articles.
To date, only one study (Shintania & Ellis, 2013) has attempted to investigate whether written CF can assist the development of explicit and implicit knowledge of English articles.
To sum up, while there is clear support for the claim that written DCF can assist learners in improving their linguistic accuracy (Kang & Han, 2015), there is only one study to date that has attempted to show whether it contributes to the development of explicit knowledge or implicit knowledge of the target structures (i.
Second, in order to investigate the effectiveness of the two feedback types on the learners’ implicit and explicit knowledge of English articles, pretest, posttest, and delayed posttest scores of each of the four tests in the three groups were subjected to a series of one-way Analysis of Variances (ANOVAs) and two-way repeated-measures ANOVAs. In the next step, to pinpoint the exact points in time where differences between the groups arose, Bonferroni’s post hoc pair-wise comparisons were used when there was a significant time-group interaction effect.
Consequently, the awareness made as a result of ME in this study might cause the interaction between explicit and implicit knowledge of English definite and indefinite articles which is assumed to trigger L2 learning (Ellis, Loewen, & Erlam, 2006).