The Effect of Two Different Types of Corrective Feedback on EFL Students’ Writing

The present study aims to compare the effectiveness of two different types of corrective feedback: implicit and explicit through learners’ process writing. Process writing is a method which includes drafts to observe students’ improvement with the help of the following drafts. In this study, the sequence of drafts is like that: D1, D2 and D3. The research is conducted with 30 Turkish elementary level students from the preparatory school at Kocaeli University. The writing subjects are chosen in harmony with the subjects in the coursebook This treatment lasts 4 hours in school and continues for students after school for 6 weeks. Students were expected to submit their second draft via email. The students are evenly divided into two groups. While the students in control group receive the correction on their draft 1 and 2 explicitly such as direct correction; the students in the treatment group are expected to infer their errors on their own from the symbols in the correction symbols chart given them beforehand. The data obtained from the second drafts given for the correction to the students after applying various corrective feedback to the students' initial drafts show that the error rate decreases in the second drafts in both groups. A similar treatment standing as Draft 3 is conducted both with the control and experimental groups after a week later. The data obtained show that there is a decrease in the error free clauses rate in the third draft when compared to the students’ second draft. Out of two different types of corrective feedback, the implicit feedback is slightly more effective