The effect of Corrective Feedback on Farsi Learners' Reading Comprehension, Anxiety, and Attitudes towards Language Learning:A Mixed-Methods Approach

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of teachers’ corrective feedbacks on L2 Farsi learners’ reading comprehension, language learning anxiety, and attitudes towards L2 learning. Thus, 44 Persian language learners who were homogeneous in terms of proficiency and studied Farsi at the International Center for Persian Instruction to Non-Persian Speakers at Ferdowsi University were randomly selected as participants. They were assigned to the control and the experiment groups. Prior to the treatment, both groups were assessed via Dörnyei’s (2005) Attitudes and Anxiety questionnaire and Ghonsooly’s (1389) Farsi Language Proficiency Test. The participants of the experimental group were then provided with different corrective feedbacks by the teacher in the course of 15 treatment sessions. After the treatment, the post-test was administered and the students’ attitudes towards the feedbacks were also obtained through a video-recorded interview. The results of the independent samples t-test demonstrated that on the reading comprehension posttest, the participants in experimental group outperformed their counterparts in the control group. Moreover, the results confirmed the effectiveness of corrective feedback in diminishing the learners' language learning anxiety. However, the teacher’s corrective feedbacks had no significant effect on the learners' attitudes towards L2 learning. The majority of the participants believed that appropriate to the occasions, a variety of corrective feedbacks should be used to enhance the effectiveness of corrective feedbacks.