The Effects of Direct and Indirect Corrective Feedback Techniques on EFL Students’ Writing

Abstract

This article presents the results of the comparison between two different Written Corrective feedback (WCF) techniques to 60 low-intermediate EFL students in Karaj, Iran. Assigned to 2 groups, the participants on one group received the direct red pen technique, whereas the participants on the other group received an indirect technique. The participants produced three pieces of writing (pre-test, immediate post-test, and delayed post-test). Simple past tense errors were targeted in the feedback. The study found that the indirect feedback group outperformed the direct feedback group on both immediate post-test and delayed post-test.