Exploring the Influence of Teachers' Written Corrective Feedback on Students' Grammatical Accuracy

Abstract

Research into foreign languages (FL) has offered conclusive results about the role of writing in achieving success in college, work, community. However, little is known about the role of written corrective feedback (WCF) in relation to the writing ability in general and grammatical accuracy in particular. Achieving grammatical accuracy can be a difficult task for FL students since it requires a full mastery of grammar rules; however, there is a possibility that teachers can make it easy for them through the use of WCF. It is hypothesized that if teachers use written corrective feedback the students’ grammatical accuracy will be enhanced. To test this hypothesis, a questionnaire and an interview were adopted and implemented. The former was administered with thirty third students of English at Hama Lakhdar university of El Oued, to know their perceptions towards WCF. The latter was done with six teachers for the sake of exploring the extent to which teachers use WCF, and their perceptions towards this strategy. The findings showed that when teachers use WCF to boost the process of writing in general and grammar accuracy in particular, by taking into consideration the students’ proficiency levels, this enhances the students’ grammatical accuracy in FL writing. The findings also showed that students give much importance to the teachers’ WCF, they will benefit as much as possible. Consequently, these research findings validate the research hypothesis