Effects of direct focused and indirect focused feedback on sentence fragments, noun-pronoun agreement, and run-on sentences in writing tasks of A2 EFL students at Universidad de Cuenca

Abstract

This quasi-experimental study reports the effects of Direct Focused and Indirect Focused Feedback on Sentence Fragments, Noun-pronoun Agreement, and Run-on Sentences in Writing Tasks of A2 EFL Students at Universidad de Cuenca during the period of October 2018 – January 2019. The study was framed by Swain’s Output Hypothesis (1985). The sample employed was comprised of 58 participants (male=28; female=30) who were assigned to two treatment groups and one control group. The first treatment group (n=20) received direct focused feedback, and the second treatment group (n=19) received indirect focused feedback on the aforementioned grammatical errors. The control group (n=19) did not receive feedback. The two feedback strategies were applied on six different writing tasks during the treatment, and the first and last task were employed as the pre- and post-test, respectively. As the data were not normally distributed, non-parametric tests were applied to measure the effects of the two feedback techniques. The statistical analysis indicated that both feedback types produced significant changes in terms of run-on sentences and sentence fragments; though, there were no significant changes in terms of noun-pronoun agreement. Moreover, after comparing the statistical results of both feedback strategies, it was found that direct and indirect focused feedback had equally significant effects. Finally, the control group did not present any changes in the grammatical targets.