Differential Effects of Written Corrective Feedback for Field Dependent and Field Independent learners of English

Field dependent and field independent learners of English as a second/foreign language are conceived to be cognitively different and to use different perceptual-analytical abilities in solving language learning problems. How is the extraction of the critical elements of teachers feedback affected by language learners level of filed (in)dependence has not yet been shown. This study was designed to compare field dependent and field independent learners in how they benefit from explicit and implicit corrective feedback (CF) to their writing. The grammatical points targeted for feedback and testing were the use of (in)definite articles and auxiliary use in written production. An intact group of 30 male and female undergraduate learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) with the age range of 21-23 was studied. The Group Embedded Figures Test (GEFT) was used to characterize learners as either more field-dependent or more field-independent. Writing samples, photocopied writings including implicit CF in the form of recasts and explicit feedback in the form of metalinguistic explanations, and the rewritten samples were used to test the effects of both feedback types across field dependent and field independent learners. The results indicated that error corrected explicitly decreased in the rewritings significantly more than those corrected implicitly. field dependent learners benefited more from implicit feedback, while field independent learners benefited more from explicit feedback. Findings imply that the effect of feedback type on second language learning may also depends on the cognitive variables (such as field dependence) that learners bring to the task of learning.

Keywords:

Field dependence , Field independence , Explicit corrective feedback , Implicit corrective feedback , Writing