A Quantitative Study of the Impact of Grammarly® Feedback on L۲ Writing and IELTS Skills of Iranian EFL Learners

This study was designed to highlight the potential effects of computer-based feedback through Grammarly® on the L۲ writing skills. To this end, ۴۰ lower-intermediate and ۴۰ upper-intermediate were selected through a standard version of OQPT as the homogeneity test. These participants represented two sub-groups namely, the Grammarly® Correction Group (GCG) and the Teacher-Correction Group (TCG). To apply the treatment, the subjects in the GCG were asked to develop eight writing tasks all in ۱۵۰-۱۹۰ words during the treatment using the Grammarly® software. However, in TCG, the teacher himself provided feedback and assessed the students’ learning. To observe the differences between groups two sets of Two-way analysis of covariance (Two-way ANCOVA) and a multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) were used. The findings of the present investigation revealed that Grammarly® software had a significant and positive effect on both upper and lower intermediate level learners’ writing. In addition, Grammarly® software had a positive and significant effect on the EFL learners’ IELTS skills such as task response, cohesion and coherence, grammatical accuracy, and lexical resource.

Keywords:

“Computer-based Feedback” , “Grammarly® software” , “Iranian EFL Learners” , “L۲ Writing Skills” , “Teacher Feedback”.