Revision vs. Attention Requirements: Impacts on the Efficacy of the Written Indirect Corrective Feedback

This quantitative experimental study, which followed a pretest-treatment-posttest-delayed posttest design, investigated the effects of revision versus attention mediation on the efficacy of the written indirect coded feedback to improve the EFL learners’ syntactic accuracy of their essays of opinion-led type. Eighty-six Turkish university learners were assigned to three groups: comprehensive indirect coded corrective feedback plus a revision requirement (ICF/+R), comprehensive indirect coded corrective feedback plus a time to pay careful attention to the received feedback (ICF/+A) and the control group that received only the comprehensive indirect coded feedback without any extra assignment (ICF). Each group received three sessions of treatment. The existence of any statistically significant differences among the three groups with regard to each received treatment was investigated in the short and long term. The indirect coded CF proved to be effective in improving the grammatical accuracy. Moreover, it was found that both revision requirement (ICF/+R) and careful attention requirement (ICF/+A) significantly outperformed the group that only received the ICF. Nevertheless, it was also proved that the group that was required to pay careful attention to and study the feedback (ICF/+A)significantly outperformed the one that experienced the revision requirement (ICF/+R). The findings were discussed in terms of noticing at the level of understanding