The Impact of ‘Metalinguistic’ Corrective Feedback on EFL Learners’ Levels of Lexical Resource and Grammatical Range and Accuracy in Their Oral Proficiency

ABSTRACT: The term ʹʹcorrective feedbackʹʹ has recently lured a great deal of attention in foreign language teaching. It is used to give foreign language learners information on correctness of what they have linguistically produced. This study tried to investigate probable impacts of ‘metalinguistic’ corrective feedback on learners’ levels of lexical resource and grammatical range and accuracy in their oral proficiency. The participants were 30 EFL learners studying the books ‘New Interchange 3’ and ‘Passages 1’. They were divided into two groups with lower-intermediate oral language proficiency which was specified by two raters having checklists of IELTS speaking band descriptor. So each group consisted of 15 members all at the same level of oral proficiency. In this study one of the groups, the experimental group, received metalinguistic feedback as the treatment and the other, the control group, received no feedback. Each group was instructed for approximately twenty hours. Then, after the treatment learners were given a post test. To discern any significant change in the mean of each group after receiving corrective feedback, t-test was applied. Based on the results of the post test, it was revealed that the experimental group which received ‘metalinguistic’ feedback outperformed the control group which received no feedback as treatment.