Investigating Oral and Written Corrective Feedback on Language Learners’ Grammar

This study aimed to determine the effectiveness of explicit oral and explicit written corrective feedback on Iranian EFL learners’ correction of grammatical structures and their attitudes towards C.F.. For this to achieve, the performance of the learners as a result of two types of feedback, namely, Explicit Oral Feedback (EOF) and Explicit Written Feedback (EWF) in the form of metalinguistic feedback (error code and explanation), was studied. Sixty homogeneous Iranian EFL female high school students were randomly assigned to oral and written experimental groups. Afterwards, a grammar test was administered to see the effect of the two types of corrective feedback. The statistical techniques employed to measure such effects were a series of independent paired samples t-tests to analyze the data. The results indicated a significant impact of EOF and EWF groups on correcting grammatical structures, although the EOF outperformed the EWF group.Semi-structured interviews were also conducted with five randomly selected students from each experimental group to check their attitudes about the corrective feedback they had received. The students considered EOF more beneficial than EWF.Implications of using these kinds of feedback in EFL classes and avenues for further research are discussed