The use of online corrective feedback in writing among ESL learners

Abstract

Covid-19 is an unprecedented situation resulting to abrupt changes being made from conventional teaching and learning to online distance learning. Educators are forced to adapt to the changes by making classroom as authentic as possible for online learning. Corrective feedback is still very significant for language learning specially to adapt to the aspect of writing in classroom. This present study aims to explore students’ performances and preferences towards method of corrective feedback given to them. Experimental design was carried out between control group and experimental group who received online corrective feedback and conventional corrective feedback respectively. Comparison was made between two groups of 48 students to study whether corrective feedback given was effective in assisting them to produce better writing draft. This study found that students who received conventional corrective feedback performed better than students who received online corrective feedback. It has also been found that students’ opinion and preferences are significantly different based on the method of corrective feedback given to them. Interestingly, the result showed that online corrective feedback is least effective for students in this study thus further improvement should be made in future considering that we are still amidst pandemic with no guarantee to end soon.