The effects of types of feedback on EFL learners production of lexical collocations

The effects of three types of feedback on Iranian EFL learners’ production of lexical collocations were investigated in this study. Among 90 students in pre-intermediate level, 78 students were selected to participate in this study. To homogenize students, a KET (Key English Test) was used. To make sure that the students did not know the target lexical collocations beforehand, a teacher-made pre-test including all 150 target lexical collocations were given to students. Afterward, students were divided into three experimental groups. All groups received the same instruction but different types of feedback during 10 sessions of treatment. Each session, students received a handout including 15 English sentences. In each sentence, there was one lexical collocation. Each collocation was written in parenthesis. The teacher asked students to write English equivalent of each collocation within twenty minutes. Then students submitted the papers to the teacher. After collecting papers, the teacher underlined the errors and gave papers back to the students. Students in groups A, B, and C received direct feedback, indirect feedback, and peer feedback on their collocational errors, respectively. The results of One-Way ANOVA procedure revealed that students who received indirect feedback, had the best performance, followed closely by students who received peer feedback. The lowest performance was related to students in direct feedback group. The results suggest that different types of feedback have different effects on EFL learners production of lexical collocations.