چکیده:
Writing is thought as the most complicated skill in second language acquisition; therefore, L2 researchers have always been in pursuit of discovering an effective approach to improve it. One of the most debated ways is feedback which has a key role in improving the quality of writing. Much of the previous research on feedback has focused on analyzing different types of feedback and their effect on the learners’ writings and few studies have examined the effectiveness of computer feedback. Therefore, the present study was conducted to 1) determine what aspects of students’ writings receive computer feedback, 2) examine the difference in the effect of computer-generatedfeedback (CBF) and Teacher-based feedback (TBF) on improving the students’ writing quality and 3) compare the differences in Depth of Processing (DOP) in processing computer and teacher feedback. The results indicated that content, style and organization of their essays received feedback from the teacher and the computer. Teacher feedback was more effective in terms of its impact on improving the quality of the writing of the students than computer-generatedfeedback and it resulted in deeper processing of lexical items, whereas computer-generated feedback invoked medium processing on grammar.
خلاصه ماشینی:
Reviewing previous studies on the effectiveness of feedback (Ashwell, 2000; Fathman & Whalley, 1990; Ferris & Roberts, 2001), Ferris (2004) concluded that most studies are in favor of error correction, and reported that it is not only helpful but necessary Several studies on L2 writing have proposed that feedback plays a crucial role in writing and have focused on studying and comparing different types of feedback which lead to improvement in writing (Carroll & Swain, 1993; Ferris, 1999, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2010; Ferris & Roberts, 2001; Han, 2002; Kim & Bowles, 2019; Mackey, Gass, & McDonough, 2000).
This has encouraged the researchers to examine the writing aspects attended to in each type of feedback, find out whether there is a difference between computer-generated and teacher-based feedback in terms of their effect on improving the quality of writing, and find out how deeply learners process feedback.
The findings regarding the higher quality of writings after receiving teacher feedback compared to computer-generated feedback are in line with those of Ferris (2002), Ferris and Roberts (2001), Shizuka (2000), Kahraman (2013) and Ware (2011) who reported that teacher-feedback in a coded or indirect style, is most effective in improving the participants’ writing skill and accuracy, developing their metalinguistic awareness, reducing anxiety and fostering language learners’ cognitive and affective, as well as contributing to long-term learning of specific linguistic forms.