The Effect of Written Corrective Feedback on the Acquisition of English Prepositions

1. IntroductionWith the emergence of error analysis in the late sixties, the negative attitudes of audiolingual method and contrastive analysis toward errors lost their popularity. According to these methodologies, errors should be prevented, and if learners committed an error, they were not successful language learners. But the new methodology saw errors as signs of learning and the question was how to treat errors. Since then the errors that language learners make when they are learning a second or foreign language became a matter of concern to the teachers and textbook writers alike (Sridhar, 1975, cited in Fisiak, 19850). Murphy (1986) stated that a language learner who makes an error must be in need of correction.Since the language in use exploits both form and function, correction may be concerned with accuracy or fluency and research of second and foreign language learning classrooms has revealed that teachers are pa rtial and selective in making corrections (Hendrickson, 1978). While some consider correction inappropriate in communication activities (Paine, 1983, cited in Brown, 1987), Murphy (1986) suggested that ? correction is necessary in communication activities'' (p. 146). Dulay, Burt, and Krashen (1982), see errors as the flawed side of learners' speech or writing and consider errors as those parts of conversation or composition that d eviate from some selected norm of mature language performance.The types of correction language teachers provide students reflect their view of language and their objectives. According to Chastain (1988), if they view language as a perfectible grammatical system, they focus students' attention on language, and they correct all the errors t he students make when they speak it. If they view language as a functional communicative system, they focus the students' attention on meaning, and they respond to the content and comprehensibility of what the students say (p. 283). While Terrell (1985) presents various reasons for not correcting students` errors directly, Newmark and Reibel (1968) contend that language teachers can correct students cognitively if they remember to support them affectively.2. Corrective Feedback StudiesIn 1996, Truscott published his famous article ''The Case Against Grammar Correction In L2 Writing Classes, '' in which he presented his controversial conclusion that written CF is not only ineffective but it is also harmful in improving L2 acquisition. He argued that corr ection in L2 writing classes should be abandoned for some reasons: a) research evidence shows that grammar correction is ineffective; b) this lack of effectiv eness is exactly what should be expected, given the nature of the correction processes and the nat ure of language learning; c) grammar correction has significant harmful effects; and d) the various arguments offered for continuing it all lack merit (p.328). Since Truscott took a very strong position, some researchers tried to challenge his idea by conducting theoretical and empirical studies to prove the effectiveness of written CF (Chandler, 2004; Ferris, 2004). This challenge has continued up to this time and the researchers are not sure about the efficacy of written CF. This uncertainty lies in the a mbiguous results of CF studies which have been carried out so far.Truscott (1996) reported that none of the CF studies could find any significant differences among the effect of different types of feedback. Guenette (2007) states that one of the reasons for the uncertainty lies in the failure to design CF studies that systematically investigate different types of written CF and control for external variables that are likely to impact on how effective CF is. Sheen (2007) sees the reason for this uncertaint y in methodological issues; telling that many written corrective studies did not have a control group that did not receive any feedback and in other studies which had a control group, the differences among the groups after treatments were not statistically significant. …