Abstract
In English writing classes the teachers give written corrective feedback (CF) to help learners improve their grammar and syntax. It has been widely debated how and to what extent grammatical CF should be given. This study examined the effectiveness of two types of CF—direct CF and metalinguistic explanation (ME) with error codes—on the use of VP-adverbs in the writing of 57 Japanese high school EFL learners. The feature of this study was that the VP-adverb errors were further categorized as lexical errors, form errors, position errors, and avoidance of usage. After completing five writing exercises on which CF was given, the participants performed an immediate posttest, followed later by two delayed posttests. The test results were compared among a direct CF group, ME group, and contrast group. Scores of high- and low-proficiency groups were also compared. In the subsample of low-proficiency learners, the ME group outperformed the contrast group in both posttests. The ME group also made fewer position errors than both other groups. The effectiveness of ME was particular to low-proficiency learners. These results suggest that ME helps low-proficiency learners and is generally useful for correcting position errors in use of VP-adverbs.
