The Effect of Corrective Feedback on the Writing Accuracy of Feedback Givers and Receivers

This quasi-experimental study set out to examine the effect of peer corrective feedback on feedback givers and receivers in L2 writing. The forms in focus were a/an, the, and the past tense.The study was conducted in an EFL classroom setting with 45 learners of English in three writing classes which served as the feedback givers, receivers, and the control group.  Over four sessions of treatment, the givers reviewed the writing of the receivers with two functions of English articles (a/an as the first mention and the as the anaphoric reference) and simple past tense (regular and irregular) as the features in focus without receiving any comments from others on their writing. The receivers received feedback from peers, but were excluded from giving any feedback to others. The control group neither gave nor received any peer feedback. The study followed a pretest, immediate post-test, delayed post-test design. Statistical analyses run on the data obtained from a picture description task and a grammaticality judgment task indicated that the givers group improved significantly more than the receivers group and the receivers group, in turn, improved significantly more than the control group in terms of the forms targeted. The results obtained imply that learners’ involvement in peer writing correction can result in significant L2 writing accuracy.