Effects of Direct Feedback on Grammatical Accuracy and Explicit/Implicit Knowledge of Target Forms

This paper describes a case study that examined learner response to unfocused written corrective feedback and its effects on grammatical accuracy for high-beginner learners of L2 English. The study was motivated by the ongoing debate (i.e. the “Truscott debate”) over the effectiveness and potentially harmful effects of grammar correction in L2 writing. Two participants wrote weekly journals over a 9-week period and received direct corrective feedback on each journal entry; five grammatical features were targeted for feedback without the knowledge of the participants. The effect of the corrective feedback was measured by a number of instruments aimed at gauging the participants’ explicit and implicit knowledge of the target features. In addition, the journal entries were analyzed for potential secondary effects of the feedback. The results showed small improvements for accuracy and explicit/implicit knowledge, but a lack of consistency for individual features, suggesting that the efficacy of feedback was minimal overall. Secondary effects were found to be either marginal or attributable to factors other than corrective feedback. The current results support Truscott’s position and suggest that incidental learning of redundant grammatical features does not take place.