چکیده:
The present study investigates whether the type of feedback
(direct or indirect) given to 41 intermediate EFL learners on six
types of errors (verb tense, noun ending, word choice, sentence
structure, article and preposition) results in improved accuracy
both in the short and long terms. To this purpose, English
students in a writing class at the University of Guilan divided
randomly into direct, indirect and control groups were presented
with the same topics to write about. The errors on pretest,
posttest 1 and posttest 2 in each group were detected and the
means of errors were investigated by ANOVA analysis. At last,
the study found a significant effect for the indirect feedback on
accuracy improvement in the use of the verb tense, noun
endings, sentence structure and articles in both short and long
term periods, but no significant effect for the preposition in the
long term and word choice in either time periods. Although the
direct feedback significantly affected the accuracy level for the
use of noun endings, prepositions, articles and sentence
structure in the short term, it did not demonstrate any statistical
significance in the long term. Moreover, no effect on verb errors
and wrong words were found in either time periods. Finally, the
indirect group outperformed the direct one on accuracy
improvement for the total number of errors. The study also
considered the use of avoidance strategy due to the provided
corrective feedback and found that, in spite of the probability of
the tendency towards using it, providing corrective feedback is
still necessary in improving L2 writing accuracy