THE IMPACT OF FOCUSED INDIRECT WRITTEN CORRECTIVE FEEDBACK ON ESL LEARNERS’ WRITING SKILLS AT THE INTERMEDIATE LEVEL: A QUASI-EXPERIMENTAL STUDY

Abstract

Written Corrective Feedback (WCF) has been a topic of discussion for a long time regarding its impact on L2 writing. There is an increasing amount of research which has looked at the effectiveness of different forms of WCF in the development of writing skills in English as an L2 or L3. This article focuses primarily on examining the effect of Focused Indirect Written Corrective Feedback (FIWCF) on the writing abilities of ESL undergraduate students in a quasi-experimental pre-test, post-test control group design. The participants of the study included 40 ESL learners studying in intermediate classes who were randomly allocated to experimental (n = 20) and control groups (n = 20). The specialised indirect WCF used for the experimental group contained metalinguistic codes for errors in verb tense (VB), article (ART), prepositions (PREP) and subject-verb agreement (SVA). Data analysis was carried out by descriptive statistics, independent samples t-test and ANCOVA using SPSS Version 26 Statistical Software. Data analysis shows that there is a significant difference between the experimental group and the control group after controlling for pre-test differences. The study concluded that focused indirect corrective feedback has positive effects on improving ESL learners' writing skills at the intermediate level, thereby contributing to a deeper understanding of its role in second language writing development.