The effectiveness of controlled written metalinguistic corrective feedback in improving writing

Abstract

This study was conducted to investigate the effectiveness of the Written Corrective Metalinguistic Feedback in Improving Students’ Writing. The research was conducted to see if the Metalinguistic feedback is more effective for the High English Proficiency students or the Low English Proficiency students. The study was on controlled marking. Therefore, the study only focused on correcting students’ usage of the Simple Past Tense. The research problems were 1) How effective was the written corrective Metalinguistic Feedback among Low English Proficiency students? 2) How effective was the written corrective Metalinguistic feedback among the High English Proficiency students? 3) The correlation between students opinion of the metalinguistic feedback and their improvement in writing. Pre-Test, Post Test 1 and Post Test 2 were carried out among 30 High English proficiency students and 30 Low English Proficiency students. T-Test was carried out to see effectiveness in the metalinguistic feedback. For the third research objective, Pearson Correlation test was carried out to see the correlation between students’ opinion of the written corrective Metalinguistic feedback and their improvement in writing. The result of the study seem to show that the Low English Proficiency students seem to benefit more from the written corrective Metalinguistic feedback and they are more keen to see metalinguistic feedback as compared to the High English proficiency group. It is hoped that with teachers support more students would appreciate this technique of marking. Besides, more students can benefit from this technique of marking with integration of grammar and vocabulary lessons.