Advances in Language and Literary Studies - Volume 9 Issue 4 - Revision-mediated and Attention-mediated Feedback: Effects on EFL Learners’ Written Syntactic Accuracy

Oct 15, 2026

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Revision requirement is presented as a potential intermediate step that can help EFL learners improve written syntactic accuracy by allowing time to process corrections, while attention mediation is grounded in the idea that learners must carefully examine feedback and their errors. This quantitative quasi-experimental study used a pretest–treatment–posttest–delayed posttest design to compare revision mediation versus attention mediation on argumentative essay accuracy across three EFL groups.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages9

Reading Time23 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Feedback and written corrective feedback

Revision requirement and noticing/understanding

The role of focused attention without revision

Advances in Language and Literary Studies ISSN: 2203-4714 [www.alls.aiac.org.au](www.alls.aiac.org.au) | Revision-mediated and Attention-mediated Feedback: Effects on EFL Learners’Written Syntactic Accuracy
Fatemeh Soltanpour1*,Mohammadreza Valizadeh2
1English Department, Kar Higher Education Institute, PO box 1571, Qazvin, Iran
2English Department, Faculty of Foreign Languages, Gazi University , PO Box 06500, Ankara, Turkey Corresponding Author: Fatemeh Soltanpour, E‑mail: [fatemeh.soltanpour@gmail.com](fatemeh.soltanpour@gmail.com) | | | --- | --- | | ARTICLE INFO | ABSTRACT
Based on the literature, revision requirement (i.e., when students rewrite their whole text based on the teacher feedback) can perhaps be a necessary intermediate step towards the development of written accuracy because learners have more time to think about and process the corrections; however, some state drawing learner’s attention can be achieved by asking them to take time to look over the received feedback and carefully examine their errors. This quantitative quasi‑ experimental study, which followed a pretest‑treatment‑posttest‑delayed posttest design, investigated the effects of revision mediation versus attention mediation on EFL learners’syntactic accuracy of their argumentative essays. 83 Iranian EFL learners, studying at upper‑ intermediate level were assigned to three groups: comprehensive direct corrective feedback plus a revision requirement (DCF/+R), comprehensive DCF plus a time to pay careful attention to and study the errors and received feedback (DCF/+S) and the control group that received the comprehensive DCF without any extra assignment (DCF/‑R,‑S) . Each group received three sessions of treatment. The existence of any statistically significant differences among the three groups with regard to each received treatment was investigated both in the short and long term. It was found that both revision requirement (DCF/+R) and careful attention requirement (DCF/+S) significantly outperformed the group that only received the feedback. Nevertheless, it was also proved that the group that was required to pay careful attention to and study the feedback (DCF/+S) significantly outperformed the one that experienced the revision requirement (DCF/+R) . Discussion focuses on the importance of two levels of awareness: noticing and understanding. | | Article history
Received: March 19, 2018
Accepted: June 17, 2018
Published: August 31, 2018
Volume: 9 Issue: 4
Advance access: July 2018 | | | Conflicts of interest: None
Funding: None | | | Key words:
Comprehensive direct corrective feedback,
Revision, Attention,
Noticing, Argumentative essays | | INTRODUCTION Feedback is considered a crucial element in second language (henceforth, L2) writing courses (Ferris, 2014) due to the fact that it has not only the potential for the development of L2 writing skills, but it can also enhance the students’motivation (K. Hyland & Hyland, 2006) . Further, if learners are not required to respond to the received written corrective feedback (henceforth, WCF), they may ignore it or attend toit only partially (Ellis, 2009; Liu & Brown, 2015). Therefore, it has been suggested that in order to engage the learners with the feedback and also hold them accountable for their learning, they be required to revise their essays based on the teacher’s feedback (Ferris, 2006; Guénette, 2012; F. Hyland, 2003; Shintani & Ellis, 2015; Storch & Wigglesworth, 2010) . Some scholars believe that revision requirement can be a helpful and perhaps necessary intermediate step to‑ wards the long-term acquisition of a specific feature (Ferris, 2004, 2010; Guénette, 2012; Sachs & Polio, 2007) and “a necessary first step in the development of written accuracy” (Liu & Brown, 2015, p. 67) because learners have more time to think about and process the corrections and try to fix the errors and modify their texts (Ferris, 2010) . As Sachs and Poli

FAQs

What does the study compare regarding feedback effects on EFL writing?

It compares revision-mediated feedback versus attention-mediated feedback on EFL learners’ written syntactic accuracy in argumentative essays.

How were the participants grouped in the quasi-experimental study?

Eighty-three Iranian upper-intermediate EFL learners were assigned to three groups: DCF/+R, DCF/+S, and a control group receiving DCF only.

What was found about revision requirement versus careful attention?

Both revision requirement and careful attention significantly outperformed the feedback-only group, and the careful attention group significantly outperformed the revision requirement group.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Cipher