Written languaging with indirect feedback in writing revision: is feedback always effective?

Abstract

Recent studies have shown that languaging contributes to second language skill development. Feedback is often used in combination with languaging as a prompt of verbalization during writing revision, and this combination has shown the effect of increasing the quality of writing. The present study tested whether and how indirect feedback helps learners engage in languaging, and whether the effects continued with the second new writing on the same topic. Forty participants engaged in a three-stage writing task: writing a first draft, revision with languaging with/without feedback on specific grammatical or lexical errors, and writing the second draft. Writing was multidimensionally assessed in terms of syntactic complexity, grammatical accuracy, and fluency. The results showed that the participants focused more on grammar when they were given feedback and succeeded in more error correction than when they did not receive feedback. Learners improved in fluency and slightly in accuracy, but not in complexity, regardless of the existence of indirect feedback. Importantly, written languaging with feedback did not show superiority to written languaging without feedback in skill development. The findings suggest that even metalinguistic correction induced by feedback is not always necessarily effective, but languaging may have a positive effect on overall writing quality.

Keywords:

• Written languaging
• attention
• writing
• revision
• indirect feedback

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 41st Annual Conference of the Japan Society of English Language Education (JASELE 2015), Kumamoto, Japan. I thank the editor, Leila Ranta, and the anonymous reviewers of Language Awareness for their invaluable comments on earlier versions of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported in part by a Grant-in-Aid for JSPS Fellows (16J09317) from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology in Japan.

Notes on contributors

Junya Fukuta

Junya Fukuta, PhD is a project assistant professor at Shizuoka University. His research interests include the interface of consciousness and language learning, and second/foreign language teaching. Some of his recent work has been published in Applied Linguistics, International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, System, and Language Teaching Research.

Yu Tamura

Yu Tamura received his PhD from Nagoya University, Japan. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Foreign Language Studies at Kansai University.

Yusaku Kawaguchi

Yusaku Kawaguchi is a lecturer in the Division of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Aichi Gakuin University, Japan. His areas of interest are computer-assisted language learning/teaching, and second/foreign language writing. Some of his recent work has been published in International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, and Language Education & Technology.