Written corrective feedback, referred to hereafter as ‘written CF’ and also known as ‘grammar correction’ or ‘error correction’, has been a controversial topic in second language studies over the past fifteen years. Inspired by John Truscott's thought-provoking 1996 essay in Language Learning, many different researchers have undertaken new programs of investigation, while others have engaged in scholarly synthesis and argumentation around the topic.
This timeline presents a historical overview of how this concern has evolved over time. I have intentionally included works from four somewhat distinct sources: (1) studies of and essays about student error and teacher error correction from (L1) composition research; (2) studies focused on error correction in foreign language contexts (including languages other than English as well as EFL); (3) works from the L2 writing literature investigating learners in ESL contexts; and (4) research from second language acquisition (SLA) that investigates the impact of written CF on learners’ acquisition of specific target structures. These different strands of primary and secondary research have overlapped and clearly informed each other, so although their authors examine the phenomenon of written CF through different lenses, it seems appropriate that all of them are represented in this historical summary.
The timeline can also be divided into separate themes, which are keyed in the last column of the chart. The first three themes represent different types of empirical work on written CF, while the fourth focuses on state-of-the-art essays, arguments, and one meta-analysis paper (Truscott Reference Truscott2007). The themes are as follows:
A Text-analytic descriptions of student errors and teacher feedback
A1 Proportions of grammar feedback compared with other types
A2 Types of errors marked
A3 Error correction types
B Studies of the effects of written CF on SLA/writing quality
B1 Controlled studies
B2 Longitudinal classroom studies
C Studies of teacher and student views on written CF
C1 Student views
C2 Teacher views
D State-of-the-art essays, meta-analyses
D1 State-of-the-art/argument essays
D2 Meta-analyses
The first theme emphasizes descriptive work of several types. In this group, sizable corpora of student texts and/or teacher error markings on student writings are analyzed, with errors/corrections identified, counted, and categorized. Such work has been used to chronicle the amount/types of students’ written errors over time and/or teacher approaches to marking errors. In L1 composition research, this type of descriptive work comprises almost all of the empirical studies of error or CF that have been completed to date (with the exception of a short but influential paper on teacher error-marking strategies published by Haswell in Reference Haswell1983).
Group B covers the most influential and recent empirical work on written CF. It includes controlled quasi-experimental studies conducted by SLA researchers and longitudinal classroom studies by L2 writing and foreign language (FL) scholars. Subtopics include the short-term and long-term effects of written CF on student accuracy, comparisons of student writers who receive written CF and those who do not, and contrasts of different written CF approaches (e.g. direct vs. indirect feedback; focused vs. unfocused feedback; feedback with or without accompanying metalinguistic explanations).
Group C covers a sizable group of studies, mostly survey and interview work completed in the 1980s and 90s, examining student and/or teacher views on feedback to writers in general and on written CF specifically. This body of work is included here because it has been influential: The consistent finding from these studies – that students value and desire written CF on their texts – informs teacher practice, and it is difficult for those who propose abandoning written CF to overcome this obstacle through argumentation.
Such arguments are the focus of Group D. Though Truscott (Reference Truscott1996) was not the first to suggest or propose that written CF was ineffective and should be abandoned, his paper inspired not only new research (to test his claims and/or ‘prove’ him wrong) but also other argument and rebuttal papers. While Truscott's exchange with Ferris in the Journal of Second Language Writing (Ferris Reference Ferris1999; Truscott Reference Truscott1999) is probably the best known of these, he has traded rebuttal papers with others since then (with Chandler: Truscott Reference Truscott2004, Reference Truscott2009). Beyond rebuttals, several papers since 1996 have examined both Truscott's original arguments in his 1996 paper and methodological issues in the available research base. These include Ferris (Reference Ferris2003, Reference Ferris2004), Hyland & Hyland (Reference Hyland and Hyland2006), Guénette (Reference Guénette2007), and Bitchener & Ferris (Reference Bitchener and Ferris2012).
Because of the proliferation of empirical work and scholarly analyses/arguments over the past 15 years, I have had to leave a few recent pieces out of the timeline, such as the rebuttals just mentioned. Due to space considerations, I have also omitted several studies by authors already in the timeline, choosing the pieces I found most representative of their line of work and/or which in my opinion move the conversation forward most clearly .
Overall, this is a robust and lively field of inquiry that continues to arouse a great deal of interest from teachers and researchers, as is indicated by the fact that articles on written CF are among the most downloaded and cited in the Journal of Second Language Writing (www.jslw.org). Both the recent empirical work and the various scholarly syntheses and analyses have improved our methods, sharpened our research questions, and given us specific ideas for pedagogy and teacher preparation as well as further ideas and parameters for future investigations. This topic is a good example of how many different minds working on the same questions really can move a field forward in productive ways.
Dana Ferris is Professor in the University Writing Program at the University of California, Davis. She is an applied linguist by training, and her research focuses on second language writers and their L2 literacy development. In particular, her work over the past 15 years has emphasized feedback to student writers and the specialized topic of written CF. Her most recent article on this topic was published in Studies in Second Language Acquisition (2010), and her most recent books include Written corrective feedback in second language acquisition and writing (co-authored with John Bitchener, Reference Bitchener and Ferris2012, Routledge), Treatment of error in second language student writing (2nd edn, 2011, University of Michigan Press), and Teaching college writing to diverse student populations (2009, University of Michigan Press).
1Authors’ names are shown in small capitals when the study referred to appears in this timeline.
