The Role of Explicit Corrective Feedback Timing in Second Language Structure Accuracy

This study examined the effects of explicit metalinguistic corrective feedback on the accurate use of English regular past tense structure. The main purpose was to investigate whether the immediate provision of metalinguistic feedback after writing task completion or its delayed provision after two days in the next classroom session could differentially impact the structure accuracy. One-hundred and five Iranian English as a foreign language (EFL) learners agreed to take part in this study and were assigned into three conditions: immediate metalinguistic feedback, delayed metalinguistic feedback, and control condition without any feedback. A repeated-measures ANCOVA was used to provide answers to the research question. Results revealed the superiority of the delayed metalinguistic feedback over both the immediate feedback and control conditions in the immediate post-test. And, in the delayed post-test, the immediate metalinguistic feedback outperformed the other groups. The implications of these findings and suggestions for further research are further discussed