The Impact of Feedback Types on Farsi Speaking EFL Learners’ Recognition and Production of Relative Clauses

Abstract

The presen­t study compared the impact of metalinguistic feedback, explicit feedback, and implicit feedback on the recognition and production of relati­ve clauses in fifty-nine intermediate Persian-speaking English learners’ performances. The three groups were matched according to the instructional time, conten­t, and methodology and received differen­t feedbacks on their writings for eight sessions. Analysis of the research data obtained from an immediate and a delayed 45-item multiple-choice focused grammar test and writing post-test displayed the difficulty hierarchy of learning relati­ve clauses. Significan­t improvemen­ts on the immediate post-test for all groups were observed, but no effect on the delayed posttest was found. The metalinguistic feedback group, however, achieved significan­tly higher levels of accuracy in their use of relati­ve clauses on the writing post-test. The findings support the Interpretabi­lity Hypothesis and the Complex Adapti­ve System Principles Model and suggest that metalinguistic knowledge can serve as compensatory mechanisms to the correct production of relati­ve clauses.

Keywords

• accuracy, explicit feedback, implicit feedback, metalinguistic feedback, relative clauses, resumptive pronouns