The Role of Individual Differences in Second Language Writing Corrective Feedback

The nature of parietal contributions to working memory (WM) remain poorly understood but of considerable interest. We previously reported that posterior parietal damage selectively impaired WM probed by recognition (Berryhill and Olson, 2008a). Recent studies provided support using a neuromodulatory technique, transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) applied to the right parietal cortex (P4). These studies confirmed parietal involvement in WM because parietal tDCS altered WM performance: anodal current tDCS improved performance in a change detection task, and cathodal current tDCS impaired performance on a sequential presentation task. Here, we tested whether these complementary results were due to different degrees of parietal involvement as a function of WM task demands, WM task difficulty, and/or participants’ WM capacity. In Experiment 1, we applied cathodal and anodal tDCS to the right parietal cortex and tested participants on both previously used WM tasks. We observed an interaction between tDCS (anodal, cathodal), WM task difficulty, and participants’ WM capacity. When the WM task was difficult, parietal stimulation (anodal or cathodal) improved WM performance selectively in participants with high WM capacity. In the low WM capacity group, parietal stimulation (anodal or cathodal) impaired WM performance. These nearly equal and opposite effects were only observed when the WM task was challenging, as in the change detection task. Experiment 2 probed the interplay of WM task difficulty and WM capacity in a parametric manner by varying set size in the WM change detection task. Here, the effect of parietal stimulation (anodal or cathodal) on the high WM capacity group followed a linear function as WM task difficulty increased with set size. The low WM capacity participants were largely unaffected by tDCS. These findings provide evidence that parietal involvement in WM performance depends on both WM capacity and WM task demands. We discuss these findings in terms of alternative WM strategies employed by low and high WM capacity individuals. We speculate that low WM capacity individuals do not recruit the posterior parietal lobe for WM tasks as efficiently as high WM capacity individuals. Consequently, tDCS provides greater benefit to individuals with high WM capacity.

The present study aims to compare the effectiveness of two different types of corrective feedback: implicit and explicit through learners’ process writing. Process writing is a method which includes drafts to observe students’ improvement with the help of the following drafts. In this study, the sequence of drafts is like that: D1, D2 and D3. The research is conducted with 30 Turkish elementary level students from the preparatory school at Kocaeli University. The writing subjects are chosen in harmony with the subjects in the coursebook This treatment lasts 4 hours in school and continues for students after school for 6 weeks. Students were expected to submit their second draft via email. The students are evenly divided into two groups. While the students in control group receive the correction on their draft 1 and 2 explicitly such as direct correction; the students in the treatment group are expected to infer their errors on their own from the symbols in the correction symbols chart given them beforehand. The data obtained from the second drafts given for the correction to the students after applying various corrective feedback to the students' initial drafts show that the error rate decreases in the second drafts in both groups. A similar treatment standing as Draft 3 is conducted both with the control and experimental groups after a week later. The data obtained show that there is a decrease in the error free clauses rate in the third draft when compared to the students’ second draft. Out of two different types of corrective feedback, the implicit feedback is slightly more effective.

The effects of structured input and working memory on the acquisition of English causative forms

Noticing has been regarded as an important theoretical construct in the mechanism of how corrective feedback (CF) facilitates second language acquisition. However, to date, only a paucity of CF research has examined noticing triggered by different types of CF (i.e., recasts vs. prompts). The study is intended to fill in the gap by examining the relationships between type of CF and level of noticing. To that end, 105 Malaysian ESL learners were asked to perform four communicative tasks during which recasts and prompts were provided contingent upon the encounter of past tense errors. To assess noticing, the study has employed a triangulated method using multiple elicitation procedures including diary writing, stimulated recall, and exit questionnaire. The results of the study revealed that both recasts and prompts were able to induce noticing the corrective intent, noticing the target of CF or form, noticing the gap, and noticing the rule. However, contrary to what was expected, recasts were able to promote higher levels of noticing across all noticing categories. Moreover, the greatest difference between recasts and prompts was found in noticing the gap. The study suggests that CF that provides exemplars of the target linguistic feature may promote higher levels of noticing the gap which may, in turn, increase the effectiveness of CF in L2 acquisition.

800x600 Research on corrective feedback has shown the beneficial effects of improving accuracy in writing though more research is being done on the effectiveness of different types of corrective feedback and the intervening variables. In line with this trend of research, this study was designed to investigate the effects of written and oral meta-linguistic feedback on the accuracy of subject-verb agreement in the writings of 47 undergraduate students. There were three groups in the study: Written Group, Oral Group and Interactional Group. The Written Group received direct error correction in combination with written meta-linguistic feedback. The Oral Group received direct error correction in combination with oral meta-linguistic feedback and the Interactional Group received direct error correction in combination with oral meta-linguistic feedback and also was involved in an interactional activity (discussion on their errors). The results demonstrated that all three groups improved their writing accuracy in the post-test as the result of receiving meta-linguistic feedback, but the Oral Group outperformed the other two groups. The findings of this study provided further evidence in support of the significant effects of corrective feedback especially oral meta-linguistic feedback which is both practical and time-saving. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17576/3L-2014-2002-10 Keywords: corrective feedback; oral meta-linguistic feedback; written meta-linguistic feedback; second language writing; university students Normal 0 false false false EN-MY X-NONE AR-SA /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";}

<p class="a"><span lang="EN-US">In this research, authors examine how individual differences in working memory capacity and Working Memory updating influence differences in impulsivity in risky decision making and behaviors. This study makes attempt to address extension of related works on the relationship between working memory, impulsivity and risky decision making and behaviors in adolescents. A large sample (420) of boy secondary grade students involved in this research; this study indicated that working memory capacity and updating Working Memory moderate some of impulsivity and high risk behaviors and decision making. Individuals with low working memory capacity and high impulsivity compared to individuals with high working memory capacity and high impulsivity are more likely subjected to risky decision making. Further, high risk behaviors are more salient in individuals with low updating Working Memory and high impulsivity. </span></p>

This study was an attempt to investigate the effect of different types of corrective feedback on Iranian EFL learners’ essay writing. To this end, the performance of the learners as a result of two types of feedback, that is, oral feedback (OF) and written feedback (WF), and each with two subcategories (focused and unfocused) was studied. To conduct the study, two writing tasks were employed as data collection instruments to measure the learners’ essay writing skill. The participants were 75 Iranian female low-intermediate EFL learners at a language institute in Shiraz. They were asked to write two essays as pretest and posttest on the basis of two similar but not identical picture stories. Each and every participant’s writing was corrected in terms of the target structures, that is, past tense, punctuation, and capitalization. Paired samples t-test, independent samples t-test, and ANOVA were utilized. The results indicated that three types of feedback, namely, oral feedback (both focused and unfocused) and written feedback (focused) were significantly effective in the posttest whereas the written unfocused feedback was not. In other words, the participants showed a statistically significant difference in their performance in the posttest as a result of receiving these three types of feedback.

The researchers exploring the effectiveness of feedback have normally contrasted groups of learners receiving different types of feedback treatments. However, since there are always individual responses to any pedagogical treatment within a group of students and the effects of feedback can vary significantly even in participants receiving the same kind of feedback in the same experiment, the present study used a qualitative case study approach and techniques such as narrative construction and qualitative comparative analysis to see how the individuals with different cognitive characteristics (namely, language learning aptitude and working memory) respond to various types of feedback (namely, direct feedback, indirect feedback with error codes and metalinguistic feedback with explanations) provided on linguistic aspects of their writings and how these characteristics might impact their learning from the feedback. The comparison of the students’ responses to the feedback provided indicated that different individuals respond to and benefit from the learning potentials of different types of corrective feedback in different and their own unique ways. In fact, the learners having higher levels of aptitude and working memory were better able to resolve their problems and improve their writing as a result of the feedback received. On the whole, the findings of the present study confirm the important role of considering learners’ individual characteristics in any pedagogical intervention.

Predicting distracted driving: The role of individual differences in working memory

This study aims to investigate which types of errors lead to which types of corrective feedback and their distribution in university preparatory school speaking classes. Discourse analytic principles were used to analyze the learners' errors and types of oral corrective feedback in communicatively oriented speaking classes. The frequency and distribution of error types and corrective feedback are examined. Three instructors teaching English speaking courses at B1 level of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages in different classes participated in the study. The data, consisting of six videotaped lessons, were transcribed for coding and analysis according to the system proposed by Lyster and Ranta (1997). First, four error types and seven types of corrective feedback were coded and then, the relationship between the feedback type and error type was examined. The results showed that the most commonly used feedback type is recast. This is followed by a translation and explicit correction. Metalinguistic feedback, elicitation, clarification requests, and repetitions are not common feedback types. Looking at the relationship between the type of corrective feedback and the type of error, grammatical errors were the most common type, but were corrected the least. On the other hand, lexical errors were the least frequent but were the most frequently corrected error type.

Reading & writing

This study compares the frequency and distribution of different types of corrective feedback (CF) (recasts, prompts and explicit correction) and learner uptake in 43 hours of classroom interaction at the 4th–5th grade level across three instructional settings: (1) two content and language integrated learning (CLIL) classrooms in Spain with English as the target language; (2) four French immersion (FI) classrooms in Quebec (using published data from Lyster and Ranta 1997); and (3) three Japanese immersion (JI) classrooms in the US (using published data from Lyster and Mori 2006). The findings revealed that teachers in all three settings used recasts, prompts and explicit correction in similar proportions, with recasts being the most frequent, followed by prompts then explicit correction. However, in the CLIL and JI classrooms, the majority of learner repair moves followed recasts, whereas the majority of repair moves in FI classrooms followed prompts. The similarities and differences across contexts are discussed in terms of the different types of recasts used by the teachers (i.e. didactic recasts in CLIL and JI; conversational recasts in FI), as well as in terms of context-specific influences and the teachers' professional trajectories.

The benefits of corrective feedback (CF) for second language (L2) learning are empirically attested, and multiple factors mediating CF effectiveness have been investigated. However, the timing of oral CF has received less attention given most research examines corrections provided immediately after an error. Delayed CF also warrants investigation; it occurs naturally in L2 classrooms and may be an appealing alternative in online learning contexts. Existing CF timing research shows either no significant differences between immediate and delayed CF, or advantages for immediate CF. To elucidate mixed findings, more CF timing studies are needed, especially those considering the effects of factors such as CF type, linguistic target and communication mode. Regarding communication mode, the effect of CF timing on errors made during text-based synchronous computer-mediated communication (SCMC), for instance, has received less attention. Examining text-based SCMC is important given its empirically attested benefits for L2 learning, and in some cases its advantage over face-to-face interaction for fostering CF effectiveness. Investigating the role of CF timing on errors made in text-based SCMC will contribute to efforts to maximize CF effectiveness in online learning environments, which are becoming increasingly common. In this study, 30 third-year learners of Spanish as a foreign language completed a one-way information-gap task with an interlocutor using Skype text-chat. On vocabulary errors, learners received either immediate or delayed error repetition plus recast, or no CF. Results revealed both CF groups significantly outperformed the comparison group on an oral picture description task, with no significant differences between immediate and delayed CF. Results may be due to the salience of the CF modality, type, and target.

Objectives: The purpose of the study was to identify the impact of age-related working memory capacity and cognitive load to word recognition using an eye tracker.Methods: A total of 48 participants (24 young, 24 elderly adults) who were divided according to working memory capacity (high, low) participated in the study. This study consisted of a digit load and word recognition task.Results: First, the elderly group had lower accuracy and slower response times than the young group. There was a significant difference between working memory capacity and cognitive load in response time. In the group with low working memory capacity, the response time increased under lower cognitive load, which was different from the group with a high working memory capacity. Next, the elderly group had a lower proportion of fixation than the young group by time interval. In addition, there was a significant interaction between group and cognitive load by time interval. In particular, the proportion of fixation decreased over time under a high cognitive load while the proportion of fixation increased under a low cognitive load in the elders, because the inhibition and switching abilities were weakened which made the elders unable to process information efficiently.Conclusion: The study results showed significant effects between working memory capacity and cognitive load in response time and proportion of fixation. This implies that complex factors influence language processing, which makes measuring accuracy insufficient. Thus, this research confirms the correlation among aging, working memory, and cognitive load through both online and offline measurement.

This study investigated the role of strategy instruction and working memory capacity (WMC) on problem solving solution accuracy in children with and without math disabilities (MD). Children in grade 3 (N = 204) with and without MD subdivided into high and low WMC were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 conditions: verbal strategies (e.g., underlining question sentence), visual strategies (e.g., correctly placing numbers in diagrams), verbal + visual strategies, and an untreated control. The dependent measures for training were problem solving accuracy and two working memory transfer measures (operation span and visual-spatial span). Three major findings emerged: (1) strategy instruction facilitated solution accuracy but the effects of strategy instruction were moderated by WMC, (2) some strategies yielded higher post-test scores than others, but these findings were qualified as to whether children were at risk for MD, and (3) strategy training on problem solving measures facilitated transfer to working memory measures. The main findings were that children with MD, but high WM spans, were more likely to benefit from strategy conditions on target and transfer measures than children with lower WMC. The results suggest that WMC moderates the influence of cognitive strategies on both the targeted and non-targeted measures.