Corrective Feedback in the EFL Classroom: Grammar Checker vs. Teacher’s Feedback.

Abstract

The aim of this doctoral thesis is to compare the feedback provided by the teacher to that obtained by the software called Grammar Checker on grammatical errors in the written production of English as a foreign language students. Traditionally, feedback has been considered as one of the three theoretical conditions for language learning (along with input and output) and, for this reason, extensive research has been carried out on who should provide it, when and the level of explicitness. However, there are far fewer studies that analyse the use of e-feedback programs as a complement or alternative to those offered by the teacher. Participants in our study were divided into two experimental groups and one control group, and three grammatical aspects that are usually susceptible to error in English students at B2 level were examined: prepositions, articles, and simple past-present/past perfect dichotomy. All participants had to write four essays. The first experimental group received feedback from the teacher and the second received it through the Grammar Checker program. The control group did not get feedback on the grammatical aspects of the analysis but on other linguistic forms not studied. The results obtained point, first of all, to the fact that the software did not mark grammatical errors in some cases. This means that students were unable to improve their written output in terms of linguistic accuracy after receiving feedback from the program. In contrast, students who received feedback from the teacher did improve, although the difference was not significant. Second, the two experimental groups outperformed the control group in the use of the grammatical forms under analysis. Thirdly, regardless of the feedback offered, the two groups showed improvement in the use of grammatical aspects in the long term, and finally, no differences in attitude towards the feedback received and its impact on the results were found in either of the experimental groups. Our results open up new lines for investigating corrective feedback in the English as a foreign language classroom, since more studies are needed that, on the one hand, influence the improvement of electronic feedback programs by making them more accurate and effective in the detection of errors. On the other hand, software such as Grammar Checker can be a complement to the daily practice of the foreign language teacher, helping in the first instance to correct common and recurring mistakes, even more so when our research has shown that attitudes towards this type of electronic feedback are positive and does not imply an intrusion into the classroom, thus helping in the acquisition of the English language.