The Effect of Teacher Direct Written Corrective Feedback on Al-Aqsa University Female Students Performance in English Essay Writing

The last two decades have witnessed a debate among L2/FL (second language/foreign language) educators and practitioners on the relationship between teacher feedback and students writing performance. This study investigated the effect of one of teacher written corrective feedback types (direct feedback) on the performance of a sample of Palestinian EFL (English as a foreign language) university female students in essay writing. The sample of the study consisted of 60 participants who were divided into two equivalent groups with thirty students in each. While the experimental group received direct feedback over a 9 week period, the control group received no-feedback at all. Two essay tests were administered in this study: a pre-test and a post-test. Utilizing means, standard deviations, and T. Test, the study found that while teacher direct written corrective feedback enhanced high achievers performance in a new piece of writing, it did not improve middle and low achievers performance. Based on such results, the study offered important implications such as using direct feedback in improving essay writing performance of EFL proficient student writers.