TEACHING AND LEARNING (EDUCATION)

Teaching and Learning (Education)

Teaching and Learning (Education)

Introduction

Differences in attitude exist considering the efficacy of written corrective repsonse (CF). (Truscott, 1996) and (Truscott, 1999), rkey stage 2ecting the views of teachers who adhere to process theories of writing, advanced the strong claim that correcting learners' errors in a written composition may enable them to eliminate the errors in a subsequent draft but has no effect on grammatical accuracy in a new piece of writing (i.e. it does not outcome in acquisition). Ferris (1999) disputed this claim, arguing that it was not possible to dismiss correction in general as it depended on the quality of the correction - in other words, if the correction was clear and consistent it would work. Truscott answered by claiming that Ferris failed to cite any clues in support of her contention. In his most recent survey of the written corrective feedback study, Truscott (2007) again critiqued the available study and concluded that 'the best approximate is that correction has a small harmful effect on scholars' proficiency to compose unquestionably' (p. 270).

Truscott has a point. Bitchener and Knoch (2008) reconsidered a number of investigations that have investigated the consequences of in writing CF. They divided these into investigations with and without a control group. All five of the investigations without a command assembly ([Chandler, 2000], [Ferris, 1995], [Ferris, 1997], [Ferris, 2006] and [Lalande, 1982]) described enhancement in grammatical correctness following corrective feedback. However, as Truscott (1996) has sharp out, such investigations cannot be utilised to assertion that CF is productive as it is always likely that enhancement would have taken place without any CF. Acommand assembly is absolutely vital to demonstrate that CF is effective. The vital clues, thus, is to be discovered in the studies with a command group. Bitchener and Knoch reconsidered seven such investigations ([Bitchener, manuscript in preparation], [Ashwell, 2000], [Fathman and Whalley, 1990], [Ferris and Roberts, 2001], [Kepner, 1991], [Polio et al., 1998] and [Sheen, 2007]). However, numerous of these bear from other problems. Some of them (e.g. (Fathman and Whalley, 1990), (Ashwell, 2000) and (Ferris and Roberts, 2001) did not examine the effect of CF on new parts of composing; that is, they only illustrated that CF assists learners to accomplish greater grammatical correctness in a second draft of the in writing composition that had been corrected. Alatest study by Sachs and Polio (2007), which contrasted the effects of reformulating students' composing and amending it, also only analyzed the effects on revising the initial text. Other studies (e.g. Kepner (1991) encompassed no pre-test making it uncertain if the groups were matching former to the treatment.

In the lightweight of the less than satisfactory research investigating in writing CF, it is not surprising that if or not to correct in writing errors continues contentious. Reviewing the literature pertaining to this argument, Hyland and Hyland (2006) commented 'it is tough to draw any clear conclusions and generalizations from the publications as a outcome of varied populations, treatments and study concepts' ...