Written Corrective Feedback: A Case Study

The present study looks at the efficacy of 3 types of written corrective feedback on errors made by French-Speaking High School students writing in English. More than 100 students, taught by 5 different teachers in 3 different schools, participated in the study. Each participant was randomly assigned to a different type of written corrective feedback: underlining, direct correct or explanation. Each time the students wrote a text in their EFL class, I (the researcher) corrected it, selected 10 errors and asked the students to state whether they understood the error. If they understood the error, they were asked to correct and/or explain it, depending on their treatment group. I then analyzed the corpus of more than 2000 errors: all the errors were categorized and the uptake moves (students’ corrections and explanations) verified. Finally, I checked whether there was a positive correlation between error types, types of corrective feedback, and students’ uptake.