Effect of Written Corrective Feedback on Grammatical Accuracy of Field (In)dependent L2 Learners Writing Ability

Corrective feedback is one of the key issues in L2 writing that contributes a decisive role in the improvement of grammatical accuracy of L2 learners writing ability. Although literature has investigated effects of different types of corrective feedback, debate about contribution of corrective feedback on L2 writing has been considered prominent in recent years and it is not clear whether field (in)dependent L2 learners benefit differently from explicit type of corrective feedback. Accordingly, this study aimed to assess effect of metalinguistic feedback on grammatical accuracy of field (in)dependent intermediate L2 learners writing ability. To this aim, 34 intermediate L2 learners in 4 intact classes, in a language institute in Iran, classified into field (in)dependent L2 learners through GEFT test, participated in this study. Field (in)dependent L2 learners were randomly assigned into 2 experimental groups that received metalinguistic feedback as the treatment and 2 control groups that did not receive any feedback. IELTS tests (i.e., writing section) were used as the pretest and the posttest to measure the participants’ learning of the L2 forms as result of metalinguistic feedback. The obtained data were analyzed through ANCOVA and post-hoc. Although findings revealed that both field (in)dependent L2 learners benefited from metalinguistic feedback, field dependent learners outperformed field independent learners.