Metalinguistic Feedback Use in Grammar Retention: A Case of Iranian High School Students

This study aimed to determine the effectiveness of Explicit Oral Feedback (EOF) in the form of Metalinguistic Feedback (Explanation) on Iranian high school students’ retention of grammatical structures. For this to achieve, the performance of the learners as a result of Explicit Oral Feedback, was studied. Sixty homogeneous Iranian EFL female high school students were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. Afterward, a grammar test was administered to see the effect of corrective feedback. The statistical techniques employed to measure such effects, were a series of independent samples t-tests and two one-way ANOVAs. The results indicated a significant effect of oral metalinguistic feedback on grammar retention over time. It is hoped that this study can help teachers to use corrective feedback strategies effectively in the process of instruction for correcting EFL learners’ grammatical errors as well as retaining grammatical structures overtime.Implications of using this kind of feedback in EFL classes and avenues for further research are discussed.

Keywords:

Explicit Feedback , grammatical structures , metalinguistic oral feedback , retention