Philippine E-Journals

Building Students’ Language Accuracy and Structural Complexity in Writing Through Direct Corrective Feedback

Krisha Angela Omayao

 

Abstract:

Feedback on written output is essential for students’ learning and improvement of performance. This study investigated the effectiveness of direct corrective feedback in improving students’ written language accuracy and structural complexity. It covered the two sections of 1st year Education students in a community college of Misamis Oriental. This study also examined the students’ strategies in dealing with feedback. It explored students’ experiences and identified the factors that affected learners’ responses to direct corrective feedback. These objectives were achieved by conducting a quasi-experiment followed by students’. They were given pre-test and post-test after the intervention using Direct Corrective Feedback. Descriptive statistics and inferential analysis such as T-test were used as statistical tools to determine if there was significant difference between the means of the two groups in this study. Results showed that majority of the respondents were females who fell in the 18-year-old age bracket. It also revealed the effectiveness of direct corrective feedback in improving learners’ overall language accuracy according to four domains which scores of the respondents improved from upper-intermediate in pretest to advanced level in posttest. Moreover, results indicated in Structural Complexity among its five domains that the proficiency level of Intermediate in the pretest had accelerated to Advance level in the posttest. These findings were attributable to the fact that the participants preferred to have direct corrective feedback, as it was easy to understand and less time consuming when applying it to new written texts. This could be related to the fact that some students preferred direct corrective feedback for they believed that it encouraged them to recognize the errors. Hence, the study concludes that direct corrective feedback has shown to be valuable practice in improving students’ accuracy and complexity [in writing] and its effectiveness is durable. Thus, students are recommended to use this strategy in the other subject to make them successful in the class and help them establish their learning goals.