The Effect of Corrective Feedback on the Development of Discoursal and Meta Discoursal Aspects of Writing: Written vs. Oral Feedback

Given the fact that corrective feedback has been proved to have a positive impact on the acquisition and development of second/foreign language, the aim of the present study was to investigate and compare the effect of oral and written corrective feedback on the development of discoursal and metadiscoursal aspects of Iranian EFL learners ‘writing. To this end, a total of 67 intermediate learners were selected, homogenized, and given a pre-test of writing. Then, written and oral metalinguistic corrective feedback on coherence, cohesion, and metadiscourse markers were given to the first and second group respectively. At the end, the two groups were given a post-test. The results of the study showed that the group which received oral metalinguistic feedback, compared with the written feedback group, could have a better writing performance as far as discoursal and metadiscoursal features of writing are concerned. It was also shown that transition markers and engagement markers were the most and the least frequent discourse markers among the two groups. It can be concluded that oral feedback has a significant effect on EFL leaners’ writing ability, as far as discoursal and metadiscoursal features are concerned. This study has implications for language instructors as well as language researchers.