The Effect of Revision Following Teacher's Indirect Written Corrective Feedback on Leaners' L2 Grammatical Accuracy in EFL Writing Classes

AbstractTeachers of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) often provide Written Corrective Feedback (WCF) due to its contribution to Second Language (L2) writing development. However, many students do not take the provided WCF into consideration. Accordingly, some researchers believe that WCF, along with revision may engage the students in the process of error correction and make the provided feedback more effective. Even though many studies have examined the efficacy of WCF, their contributions to the mediating role of revision are minimal and inconclusive due to methodological or design flaws and no studies have been conducted on this topic in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). Therefore, the current study examines the impact of revision following WCF on improving EFL undergraduate Kurdish students' writing accuracy and whether this impact can be transferred to new writing pieces. Furthermore, it investigates whether various types of grammatical features (article system, subject /verb agreement, and verb form) are equally influenced by the revision practice. It further explores the perception of the subject teacher towards the process of revision and its effect on students’ writing performance. To achieve these aims, the study employed a mixed-method design for data collection and analysis. The quantitative data was collected using a quasi-experimental design in which fifty second-year English students from a KRI public university were assigned as treatment (revised their writing based on WCF) and control groups (only checked the WCF without revising their writing). Following the treatment, a semi-structured interview with the subject teacher was conducted to secure the qualitative data. The data were analysed using SPSS and thematic analysis. The results of the quantitative phase revealed that revision of the writing tasks enhances their L2 writing grammatical accuracy and its effect is persistent in new writing pieces over time. A further finding was that the impact level of revision varied from one grammatical feature to another. Relatedly, it was also concluded from the qualitative data that demanding students to revise is effective in fostering engagement and motivation for both students and teachers. This study contributes to raising awareness among stakeholders on how to integrate and employ WCF and revision into the educational process.Keywords: Written Corrective Feedback, revision, grammatical accuracy, teachers, students.