error correction in socio-cultural perspective: feedback and noticing in zpd

researchers have suggested that interactional feedback which is between teacher and learner during their writing is associated with l2 learning because it prompts learners to notice l2 forms. this paper reports a classroom-based study that investigated the role of feedback in socio-cultural theory. in this study, 12 efl learners performed on three writing tasks and were provided with a three-stage procedural corrective feedback which started with metalinguistic implicit feedback and moved to metalinguistic implicit-explicit feedback and finally explicit correction by the teacher. feedback was provided to learners in response to their written problems with past tense forms, subject-verb agreement, and countable and uncountable nouns. learners’ noticing of their written errors was assessed through verbal recall protocols based on their journals. their attitude towards the procedural feedback was also checked through their reports. the findings suggested that despite being at the same level of proficiency as determined by the placement test of the language school, each learner noticed the errors at one of the three stages of the implicit-explicit feedback based on his/her zpd.