THE EFFECT OF DIFFERENT TYPES OF WRITTEN CORRECTIVE FEEDBACK ON THE IMPROVEMENT OF ACCURACY OF THE USE OF CAPITALIZATION AMONG FEMALE LEARNERS

To date, conflict exists in the literature on whether or not and how teachers should react to English as a foreign language (EFL) learnersʹ written grammar errors. To shed light on the factors that may explain such conflicting results, this study investigated the effect of four feedback types (i.e., metalinguistic explanation, direct correction, circling, and no correction) with regard to possible improvements in the accuracy in writing of a total of 80 pre-intermediate EFL learners. It, further, sought whether such an effect would last in the long run. In the course of 12 weeks, learners’ capitalization errors in 3 groups were reacted through metalinguistic explanation, direct correction, and circling (N=20, each group). However, in line with Truscott, the only reaction subjects in the third treatment group (N=20) received were comments such as great, good, ok, etc. Analysis of the written pieces in the immediate post-test and delayed post test revealed that 3 types of corrective feedback, compared to the no correction group, had a significantly more positive influence on learnersʹ accurate use of capitalization both in the short and in the long run. The findings imply that teachers should weigh the learnersʹ abilities and interlanguage, proficiency level, and type of error before applying different feedback types.