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SYSTEM
System 36 (2008) 353371
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The eects of focused and unfocused written

corrective feedback in an English as a
foreign language context
Rod Ellis a,b,*, Younghee Sheen c, Mihoko Murakami d,
Hide Takashima e
a
DALSL, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand
b
Shanghai International Studies University, China
c
American University, Washington, DC, United States
d
Seijoh University, Japan
e
Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Japan

Received 12 November 2007; received in revised form 14 February 2008; accepted 28 February 2008

Abstract

Truscott [Truscott, J., 1996. The case against grammar correction in L2 writing classes. Language
Learning 46, 327369; Truscott, J., 1999. The case for the case for grammar correction in L2 writing
classes: a response to Ferris. Journal of Second Language Writing 8, 111122] laid down the chal-
lenge to teacher educators and teachers to justify their faith in written corrective feedback (CF) with
hard evidence from studies that have investigated its eects on subsequent writing. The study
reported in this article set out to provide evidence that CF is eective in an EFL context. Using a
pre-testimmediate post-testdelayed post-test design, it compared the eects of focused and unfo-
cused written CF on the accuracy with which Japanese university students used the English indenite
and denite articles to denote rst and anaphoric reference in written narratives. The focused group
received correction of just article errors on three written narratives while the unfocused group
received correction of article errors alongside corrections of other errors. Both groups gained from
pre-test to post-tests on both an error correction test and on a test involving a new piece of narrative
writing and also outperformed a control group, which received no correction, on the second post-
test. The CF was equally eective for the focused and unfocused groups. This study, together with

*
Corresponding author. Address: DALSL, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New
Zealand.
E-mail address: r.ellis@auckland.ac.nz (R. Ellis).

0346-251X/$ - see front matter 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.system.2008.02.001
354 R. Ellis et al. / System 36 (2008) 353371

a few other recent studies, indicates that written CF is eective, at least where English articles are
concerned, and thus strengthens the case for teachers providing written CF.
2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Grammar; Focused/unfocused feedback; L2 acquisition

1. Introduction

Dierences in opinion exist regarding the ecacy of written corrective feedback (CF).
Truscott (1996, 1999), reecting the views of teachers who adhere to process theories of
writing, advanced the strong claim that correcting learners errors in a written composition
may enable them to eliminate the errors in a subsequent draft but has no eect on gram-
matical accuracy in a new piece of writing (i.e. it does not result in acquisition). Ferris
(1999) disputed this claim, arguing that it was not possible to dismiss correction in general
as it depended on the quality of the correction in other words, if the correction was clear
and consistent it would work. Truscott replied by claiming that Ferris failed to cite any
evidence in support of her contention. In his most recent survey of the written corrective
feedback research, Truscott (2007) again critiqued the available research and concluded
that the best estimate is that correction has a small harmful eect on students ability
to write accurately (p. 270).
Truscott has a point. Bitchener and Knoch (2008) reviewed a number of studies that
have investigated the eects of written CF. They divided these into studies with and with-
out a control group. All ve of the studies without a control group (Chandler, 2000; Fer-
ris, 1995, 1997, 2006; Lalande, 1982) reported improvement in grammatical accuracy
following corrective feedback. However, as Truscott (1996) has pointed out, such studies
cannot be used to claim that CF is eective as it is always possible that improvement
would have taken place without any CF. A control group is essential to demonstrate that
CF is eective. The crucial evidence, therefore, is to be found in the studies with a control
group. Bitchener and Knoch reviewed seven such studies (Bitchener, forthcoming; Ash-
well, 2000; Fathman and Whalley, 1990; Ferris and Roberts, 2001; Kepner, 1991; Polio
et al., 1998; Sheen, 2007). However, many of these suer from other problems. Some of
them (e.g. Fathman and Whalley, 1990; Ashwell, 2000; Ferris and Roberts (2001) did
not examine the eect of CF on new pieces of writing; that is, they only demonstrated that
CF assists learners to achieve greater grammatical accuracy in a second draft of the written
composition that had been corrected. A recent study by Sachs and Polio (2007), which
compared the eects of reformulating students writing and correcting it, also only exam-
ined the eects on revising the original text. Other studies (e.g. Kepner (1991) included no
pre-test making it uncertain whether the groups were equivalent prior to the treatment.
In the light of the less than satisfactory research investigating written CF, it is not sur-
prising that whether or not to correct written errors remains contentious. Reviewing the
literature relating to this controversy, Hyland and Hyland (2006) commented it is dicult
to draw any clear conclusions and generalizations from the literature as a result of varied
populations, treatments and research designs (p. 84).
However, a number of recent studies have avoided the design aws referred to above
(although problems still remain, as Truscott (2007) has pointed out). These studies provide
evidence that written CF can aid the acquisition of grammatical features. Bitchener et al.
 R. Ellis et al. / System 36 (2008) 353371 355

(2005) investigated the eects of direct written CF combined with feedback in ve-minute
oral conferences with individual writers on three types of error (prepositions, the past sim-
ple and the denite article). They found that the CF led to improved accuracy on both the
use of past simple and articles (but not prepositions) over a 12-week period. This study,
however, only testies to the joint eect of written and oral CF on learners writing. Also,
as Truscott (2007) has pointed out, the no-correction group had 192 fewer hours of
instruction overall than the oral-written correction group (i.e. the groups were not strictly
speaking comparable). Sheen (2007) investigated the eects of just written corrections on
intermediate ESL learners use of English articles in narratives. A strength of this study
was that acquisition was measured in three dierent ways by means of an error correc-
tion test, a speeded dictation test, and a new piece of writing (although this was guided
rather than entirely free). The eects of the CF were evident in statistically signicant gains
on all three tests in comparison to a control group. This study, then, provides clear evi-
dence that the written correction can have a positive eect on learners ability to use arti-
cles accurately. Bitchener (forthcoming) also investigated the eects of CF on ESL
learners acquisition of English articles in a carefully designed longitudinal study and sim-
ilarly showed that it led to gains in accuracy over time.
These three studies, therefore, constitute a serious challenge to Truscotts (1996) claim
that CF has no eect on the development of learners grammatical accuracy, although
some methodological doubts remain. Also all these studies investigated CF in an ESL con-
text. There is a clear need for further research, especially in an EFL context.
Other studies have investigated the eects of dierent types of written CF. Some studies
compared correcting errors with correcting content. Sheppard (1992), for example, com-
pared a group that received written and oral grammar corrections with another group that
received only content corrections, nding no dierence in improvement in grammatical
accuracy. Two types of error correction that have received attention from researchers to
date are direct and indirect CF. The former refers to CF that supplies learners with
the correct target language form when they make an error. The latter refers to various
strategies (e.g. simply indicating errors) to encourage learners to self-correct their errors.
Bitchener and Knoch (2008) reviewed ve studies that compared the eectiveness of these
two types of CF (Chandler, 2003; Ferris, 2006; Lalande, 1982; Robb et al., 1986; Semke,
1984). Two studies reported no dierence, two reported in favour of indirect CF and one
reported in favour of direct CF. However, these studies operationalized the direct and
indirect CF in very dierent ways, so it is not perhaps so surprising that they produced
mixed ndings.
The distinction between direct and indirect CF makes sense in terms of language
pedagogy but it is somewhat problematic when viewed from the perspective of second
language acquisition theory. It is important to distinguish between two senses of acquisi-
tion (Ellis, 1994): (1) the internalisation of a new linguistic form and (2) the increase in
control of a linguistic form that has already been partially internalised. Indirect CF has
the potential to assist (2) but it is not clear how it can address (1). Direct CF, because
it supplies learners with the correct target form, can assist with (1). It follows that the eec-
tiveness of direct and indirect CF is likely to depend on the current state of the learners
grammatical knowledge. From a practical standpoint, however, it is unlikely that teachers
will be suciently familiar with individual learners interlanguages to be able to make
principled decisions regarding whether to correct directly or indirectly. From a practical
perspective, therefore, this distinction may not be the one that needs investigating.
356 R. Ellis et al. / System 36 (2008) 353371

Another distinction of greater theoretical and practical signicance is between direct

and metalinguistic feedback. Again, direct feedback entails supplying learners with the
correct target form. Metalinguistic feedback involves providing some kind of metalinguis-
tic clue as to the nature of the error that has been committed and the correction needed.
Metalinguistic feedback, then, appeals to learners explicit knowledge by helping them to
understand the nature of the error they have committed. Sheen (2007), in the study
referred to above, compared direct CF alone and direct CF in combination with metalin-
guistic CF. In general, the results of this study showed that direct CF in combination with
metalinguistic CF was more eective than direct CF. Crucially, in the light of Truscotts
critique of previous studies of written CF, this result was obtained by examining the accu-
racy of articles in the writing test, which involved a new piece of writing.
A further distinction that needs to be examined is that between unfocused and
focused CF. The former corresponds to what might be considered normal practice in
writing instruction (although not necessarily what L2 writing researchers advocate); teach-
ers correct all (or at least a range of) the errors in learners written work. This type of CF
can be viewed as extensive because it treats multiple errors. In contrast, focused CF
selects specic errors to be corrected and ignores other errors. Highly focused CF will
focus on a single error type (e.g. errors in the use of the past simple tense). Somewhat less
focused CF will target more than one error type but will still restrict correction to a limited
number of pre-selected types (e.g. simple past tense; articles; prepositions). There are solid
theoretical reasons for believing that focused CF will be more eective that unfocused CF.
Learners are more likely to attend to corrections directed at a single (or a limited number
of ) error type(s) and more likely to develop a clearer understanding of the nature of the
error and the correction needed. If attention and understanding are important for acqui-
sition, as cognitive theories of L2 acquisition have claimed (e.g. Schmidt, 1994; Ellis,
2005), then focused CF is clearly better equipped to produce positive results. Sheen
(2007) and Bitchener (forthcoming) both examined focused CF; corrections were directed
solely at the use of the indenite article to express rst mention and the denite article for
subsequent mention. Thus the positive results they obtained testify to the ecacy of
focused CF. However, neither study compared focused with unfocused CF. There is a
clear need for such an investigation. This is one of the aims of the study reported below.

2. Research questions

The study reported below was designed to investigate the following research questions:

1. Does written CF help Japanese learners of English to become more accurate in the use
of the English indenite and denite articles to express rst and second mention?
2. Is there a dierence in the eect of unfocused and focused CF directed at using the
indenite and denite articles to express rst and second mention?

3. The target structure

Sheen (2007) and Bitchener (forthcoming) both chose to investigate the eects of CF on
L2 learners use of articles (to express rst and second mention). Grammatical and
ungrammatical examples of this structure, taken from the data collected for the study,
are as follows:
 R. Ellis et al. / System 36 (2008) 353371 357

There is a dog. The dog felt very hungry.

* One day the dog stole a bone from the butcher. The dog escaped. (a needed for rst
mention of dog and butcher).
* The dog tried stealing a bone. He biting a bone. (the is needed for second mention).

There are good reasons for choosing articles to express rst mention and anaphoric ref-
erence as the target structure. First, obligatory occasions for this use of articles appear reg-
ularly in certain types of discourse (e.g. narratives) and thus provide a basis for reliable
analysis of learners accuracy of use. Second, learners of intermediate level and above will
already have begun to acquire English articles (see, for example, Young, 1996). That is,
they will be appearing in their writing. Thus, they constitute an example of a structure that
has been partially acquired (i.e. used but not always correctly) rather than an entirely new
structure. Arguably, CF (as a form of negative evidence) will be more eective in assisting
learners to develop control over structures they have began to acquire than in helping
them acquire entirely new linguistic forms that they may not be ready to acquire. Third,
articles constitute a problem for L2 learners, especially those learners whose L1 does
not contain articles (e.g. the Japanese learners that were the participants of the study).
Fourth, although articles constitute a highly complex sub-system because they are
multi-functional, the use of the indenite and denite articles to express rst mention
and anaphoric reference constitutes a relatively well-dened aspect which can be easily
understood by most learners.

4. Method

4.1. Design

The study used a quasi-experimental design involving intact classes serving as two
experimental groups focused CF (N = 18), unfocused CF (N = 18) and a control group
(N = 13). All three groups completed a pre-test, an immediate post-test and a delayed
post-test, where all the tests involved narrative writing based on picture stories. In addi-
tion, all three groups completed an error correction test prior to the treatment and imme-
diately following the treatment. The two experimental groups received error correction on
three written narratives. One group received focused correction (i.e. correction directed
exclusively at errors involving the use of articles for rst and second mention) and the
other unfocused correction (i.e. correction directed at a variety of linguistic errors includ-
ing article errors).

4.2. Participants

The participants were 49 students enrolled in general English classes in a national uni-
versity in Japan. All the students had completed 6 years of English study, involving
approximately 800 h of classroom instruction, before entering university. The students
in the focused and unfocused groups were between 18 and 19 years old, were all in their
rst year of study taking their rst English class at university. They were among the top
students in the university according to the results of the university entrance examination
and can be considered of intermediate English prociency. The students in the focussed
group were all male and were studying aviation or technology as their major. The students
358 R. Ellis et al. / System 36 (2008) 353371

in the unfocussed group were predominantly male (only two females) and were studying
industrial design as their major. The students in the control group were between 19 and
20, were in their second year of study at the university and were studying agriculture as
their major. Six were female and 11 male. They had completed two previous English clas-
ses at the university.
The teacher was one of the researchers. She was an experienced non-native speaking
teacher of English as a foreign language and possessed a masters degree in English lan-
guage teaching. She was the classs normal teacher.

4.3. The instructional setting

The students were required to take one English course each semester. Due to time-
tabling constraints, separate English classes were held for students from dierent depart-
ments. The experimental groups were taking a reading class. In both cases their course
involved one 90 minute English class for 15 weeks. The control group was an oral commu-
nication class. The aim of this class was to foster communicative ability by means of task-
based instruction. Care was taken to ensure that, during the period of study, no explicit
attention was paid to articles.

4.4. Treatment

There were three treatment sessions. The students in all three groups wrote the same
three narratives in separate lessons and received feedback from the same teacher on each
piece of writing. The schedule for the whole study is shown below.
The narrative tasks involved reading and then rewriting animal stories. The three ani-
mal stories in the order in which they were completed were: (1) The Lion and the Mouse,
(2) How the Dalmatian Got its Spots and (3) The Ant and the Grasshopper. The text
for the second of these is provided in the Appendix as an example. It was made clear to the
students that their stories would not be assessed and that they would not be considered in
determining their grades for the course [Note 1].
The procedure adopted for the tasks was as follows:

1. First, the teacher handed out a short animal story together with pictures and told the
students that they were going to read the story and then rewrite the story.
2. Students were asked to read the fable silently.
3. The teacher explained key words and discussed the story with the class.
4. The teacher read the story aloud once to refresh their memory.
5. The teacher collected in the animal stories (but let the students keep the pictures) and
then gave out a blank writing sheet. She told the students to write a title for the story
and then to retell the story with as much detail as they could remember.
6. The teacher collected the students written stories.

The teacher provided feedback on each students story and handed it back to the stu-
dents in the next lesson. The students were given time to examine the feedback and then
wrote the next story in the same lesson. The procedure for the two experimental groups
was as follows:
 R. Ellis et al. / System 36 (2008) 353371 359

1. The teacher corrected the narratives in the two experimental groups in accordance with
the correction guidelines (see below).
2. In the following class (typically seven days later), the students received their stories back
with corrections.
3. The students were asked to look over their errors and the corrections carefully for at
least ve minutes. However, the teacher did not comment further on their errors or give
any additional explanation; nor were students asked to revise their writing.

The procedure for the control group was the same except that the students received no
corrections of their linguistic errors. Instead they received a simple general comment or
question (e.g. Good!, Are they happy then?, What happened then?).

4.5. Written CF correction guidelines for the experimental groups

1. Direct/unfocused CF:
This involved correcting article errors together with other types of error (e.g. errors in
past tense, prepositions and vocabulary) by indicating and correcting the errors on the
students stories. For example in the student story below it involved inserting a before
bone and butcher in the rst sentence and crossing out having and inserting the
before bone in the second sentence. Up to four errors were corrected, two of which
were always article errors.

a a the
A dog stolebone frombutcher. He escaped with having bone.

2. Direct focused:
This was the same as for direct/unfocused except that ONLY article errors were cor-
rected. The aim was to correct a maximum of four article errors involving rst/second
mention but this was not always possible as some students produced few errors.

4.6. Tests

Two types of tests were used in the study: (1) narrative writing tests and (2) an error
correction test.

4.6.1. Narrative writing tests

Three dierent picture compositions were used, all taken from Byrne, 1967): (1) The
Dog and the Bone, (2) The Blind Man and (3) A Thief Gets Caught. Each picture com-
position consisted of four pictures. These picture compositions were chosen because they
involved reference to two or more people/objects and thus created contexts for the use of
the target structure. To guard against the possibility that the stories posed diering levels
of diculty for the learners they were counterbalanced in each group at each testing time.
Thus at each testing time approximately one-third of each group completed a dierent
story. No student was given the same story to write on more than one occasion (i.e. the
post-tests represented new pieces of writing). For each test, students were given one of
the stories and a sheet of paper and asked to write a title for the story and a detailed story.
They wrote without any time pressure.
360 R. Ellis et al. / System 36 (2008) 353371

The pre-test was administered immediately before students were given the rst writing
task. The immediate post-test was administered the same day they received the feedback
on their last piece of writing. The delayed post-test was administered approximately 4
weeks later.

4.7. Error correction test

This was a version of the testing instrument used in Sheen (2007). It consisted of 16
items, each containing two related statements, one of which was underlined. The under-
lined sentence contained an error. The students were asked to write out the incorrect sen-
tence correctly. Twelve of the 16 items contained sentences with article errors (6 involving
a and 6 involving the). There were also four distractors, i.e. sentences containing other
kinds of errors.

4.8. Exit questionnaire (based on Sheen, 2007)

The learners were asked to complete an exit questionnaire after they had completed the
treatment tasks and tests. The purpose of this was to establish whether they had recog-
nized that the focus of the writing they had completed was on articles. The questionnaire
consisted of the following multiple choice question:
Now you have completed all the tasks, what do you think they were all about?

1. They were practising writing.

2. They were practising my grammar.
3. They were practising my general English skills.
4. They were practising vocabulary.

They were also asked to respond to the following open question:Please write freely
what you think you have learned from doing these tasks.

4.9. Schedule

The schedule for the study is shown in Table 1. The entire study was spread over a per-
iod of 10 weeks. There was a gap of 3 weeks between the Writing Post-test 1 and the Writ-
ing Post-test 2 when the students in all three groups followed their regular classes (i.e.
reading in the case of the two experimental groups and oral communication in the case

Table 1
Schedule for the study
Week Activity
1 Writing pre-test: error correction pre-test
2 Task 1
4 Feedback on Task 1: task 2
5 Feedback on task 2: Task 3
6 Feedback on task 3: exit questionnaire: writing post-test 1: error correction post-test
10 Writing post-test 2
 R. Ellis et al. / System 36 (2008) 353371 361

of the control group). During this period none of the groups received any corrective feed-
back of any kind.

4.10. Scoring and analysis

To examine the eects of the two types of treatment on learners use of the indenite
article (for rst mention) and the denite article (for anaphoric reference), scores for each
of the narrative writing tests (pre-test, immediate post-test and delayed post-test) and also
for the two administrations of the error correction test were obtained by one of the
researchers.
Writing test scores were calculated by means of obligatory occasion analysis (Ellis and
Barkhuizen, 2005). That is, all obligatory occasions for the use of a (rst mention) and
the (anaphoric reference) were identied. Each occasion was then inspected to determine
whether the correct article had been supplied. Non-suppliance took the form of either
omission of any article or of the use of the wrong article (e.g. the instead of a) [Note
2]. In the case of contexts requiring the indenite article, either a or an was accepted
as correct irrespective of which form of the indenite article the context required. An accu-
racy score was then calculated for each learner by dividing the total number of correctly
supplied articles by the total number of obligatory occasions and expressed as proportions
of 1. To examine the reliability of the scoring of the writing tests, 20 texts from the pre-test
were randomly selected from the three groups and re-scored by the same researcher one
month after they were initially scored. The Pearson Product Moment Correlation (r) for
the two sets of scores was .97.
In the error correction test one point was awarded for each sentence containing an arti-
cle error that had been successfully corrected. The distractor items were ignored. Thus, the
maximum possible score was 12.
The scores for the narrative writing tests were analysed by means of a repeated mea-
sures ANOVA (3 groups  3 times) with post-hoc one-way ANOVAs. The scores for
the error correction tests were analysed by a repeated measures ANOVA (3 groups  2
times) with post-hoc Tukey or t-tests.
The exit questionnaire was analysed by identifying which learners reported that the
focus of the tasks was on their grammar, either in their response to the multiple choice
question or by mentioning grammar in their answer to the free response question.

5. Results

We will begin by presenting the results of the exit questionnaire. We then briey exam-
ine the nature of the treatment provided to the two experimental groups by reporting the
frequency of the corrections they received. Finally, we will report the results for the nar-
rative writing and the error correction tests.

5.1. Exit questionnaire

The overwhelming response of the students to the exit questionnaire was that the tasks
were intended to practice their writing skills or general English skills. Only one student
responded to the multiple choice question by indicating that the purpose was to practice
grammar. A number of students (4 in the focused group, 1 in the unfocused group and 0 in
362 R. Ellis et al. / System 36 (2008) 353371

the control group) mentioned grammar in their free responses. However, of these only one
learner from the focused group specically mentioned articles. This learner wrote:
I think a is very important.
Overall, then, the students reported focusing on writing in general and showed no
awareness that the tasks were designed to help them learn to use articles correctly [Note 3].

5.2. Frequency of error corrections

Table 2 shows the frequency of the error corrections that each experimental group
received. A number of the learners scored above .9 on the pre-test. As 90% accuracy is
commonly taken as the criterion level for acquisition of a grammatical feature (Brown,
1973), a decision was taken to remove all those learners who had achieved this criterion
in the pre-test. This reduced the sizes of the three groups to 11 (focussed), 13 (unfocussed)
and 11 (control), who were all present at the three testing times. As intended by the design
of the study, the Focused Group received more frequent corrections of article errors than
the Unfocused Group (i.e. a mean of 5.64 as opposed to 3.7). The Unfocused group, how-
ever, still received a substantial number of article corrections almost as many, in fact, as
corrections of other types of linguistic errors.

5.3. Narrative writing tests

Table 3 presents the means and standard deviations for the pre-test, post-test 1 (imme-
diate) and post-test 2 (delayed) for those learners in each of the three groups who scored
below .9 in the pre-test. All three groups increased the accuracy of their use of articles to
express rst mention and anaphoric reference from the pre-test to post-test 1. However,
whereas the focussed group continued to gain in accuracy between the post-test 1 and
post-test 2 and the unfocused group maintained the same level of accuracy, the control
groups accuracy declined. This pattern of results is shown clearly in Fig. 1.

Table 2
Frequency of error corrections in the two experimental groups
Groups Article Other
n Total Mean n Total Mean
Focussed 11 62 5.64
Unfocussed 13 48 3.7 13 55 4.23

Table 3
Descriptive statistics for the narrative writing tests
Groups n Pre-test Post-test Delayed Post-test
M SD M SD M SD
Focussed 11 0.734 0.076 0.822 0.150 0.899 0.076
Unfocussed 13 0.623 0.153 0.829 0.155 0.832 0.140
Control 11 0.588 0.238 0.740 0.218 0.663 0.187
 R. Ellis et al. / System 36 (2008) 353371 363

1
Focussed
0.9 Unfocussed
Control
0.8

0.7

0.6

0.5
Pre-test Post-test Delayed Post-test

Fig. 1. Three groups scores on the narrative writing.

There were both statistically signicant dierences for group (F (2, 35) = 4.85, p < .01)
and for time (F (2, 35) = 13.68, p < .001). The timegroup interaction was not statistically
signicant (F (4, 35) = 1.43, p = .23). Subsequent one-way ANOVAs showed that while
the group dierences in neither the writing pre-test (F(2, 35) = 2.26, p = .12) nor writing
post-test 1 (F(2,35) = .895, p = .42) were statistically signicant, the three groups did dier
signicantly on the writing post-test 2 (F(2, 35) = 8.17, p < .001). Both experimental
groups were notably more accurate than the control group on this test [Note 4]. However,
the dierence between the focused and unfocused groups was not signicant. The focused
group was signicantly more accurate in post-test 2 than in the pre-test (F(2) = 6.44,
p < .01), while the unfocused group was signicantly more accurate in both post-test 1
and post-test 2 (F(2) = 18.47, p < .001) than in the pre-test. No signicant dierences
between any of the tests were found in the control group (F(2) = 1.74, p = .20).
To summarize, all three groups improved from pre-test to post-test 1 with the result
that no group dierences were evident on post-test 1. However, both experimental groups
proved more accurate in the long term than the control group, a dierence that was sta-
tistically signicant. The unfocused group improved more than the focused group initially
but whereas the focused group continued to improve, the unfocused group did not. How-
ever, the dierences between the two experimental groups were not statistically signicant.

5.4. Error correction test

Table 4 shows the means and standard deviations for the error correction test. The
same 35 students as for the narrative writing tests were included in this analysis (but
one learner was missing from the post-test). Overall, there were both signicant group

Table 4
Descriptive statistics for the error correction test
Groups Error correction pre-test Error correction post-test
n M SD n M SD
Focussed 18 6.278 3.832 17 9.059 3.269
Unfocussed 18 6.611 3.775 18 9.000 2.249
Control 13 4.385 3.453 13 5.385 3.990
364 R. Ellis et al. / System 36 (2008) 353371

dierences (F (2, 49) = 3.97, p < .03) and time dierences (F (1, 49) = 23.49, p < .001. One-
way ANOVAs showed that although there was no signicant dierence in the pre-test
scores (F (2, 38) = 1.06, p = .36), there was in the post-test scores (F (2, 38) = 4.02,
p < .03). Both experimental groups outperformed the control group on this test but did
not in themselves dier. Also both the focused group (t (13) = 4.71, p < .001) and the
unfocused group (t (14) = 2.90, p < .02) increased their scores signicantly from pre-test
to post-test, while in the control group there was no signicant improvement (t (11) =
1.08, p = .31) [Note 5].

6. Discussion

Research question 1 asked whether written CF enabled the Japanese learners to use the
indenite article with the function of rst mention and the denite article with the function
of anaphoric reference more accurately. This question can be answered by examining the
results for both the written narrative tests and the error correction tests. The former pro-
vides a measure of the learners ability to use articles while engaged in composing a written
text and thus has high ecological validity. The latter provides a measure of learners ability
to monitor errors using their metalinguistic knowledge, a skill that can also be considered
important for writing.
The control groups use of articles was unstable, rising from the pre-test to post-test1
only to fade away again on post-test 2, although the overall dierences from one time
to the next were not statistically signicant. Out of the 11 learners in this group, 5 scored
lower on post-test 1 than in the pre-test while 5 scored higher and 1 the same in the two
tests. Comparing post-test 1 and post-test 2, 8 learners achieved lower scores and only 3
higher. In other words, the controls groups use of articles was inconsistent manifesting
marked uctuations in accuracy from one time to the next. Bitchener et al. (2005) also
reported marked variability in the use of the denite article in the control group in their
study. A possible explanation for these individual uctuations in both this study and
Bitchener et al.s may have been dierences in the writing tasks used to test the learners.
However, this does not explain why the control group exhibited greater variability across
testing times than the two experimental groups.
The patterning of scores for the two experimental groups was much more consistent. In
the focused group, 8 of the learners showed gains from the pre-test to post-test 1 and only
3 showed losses; in the unfocused group 12 learners showed gains and only 1 showed a
loss. The pattern, therefore, is clear a general gain in accuracy in the individual learners
in the experimental groups. The focused group continued to display the same pattern from
post-test 1 to post-test 2; 7 learners gained, one remained the same and three showed small
losses. The unfocused group was more mixed; 6 gained, 3 remained at the same score while
4 declined.
This pattern of results suggests the following:

(1) Exposure to written corrective feedback helped the learners to use articles with
greater consistency in subsequent writing and, in most cases, to manifest gains in
accuracy which were durable.
(2) In the long term these gains were signicantly greater than those achieved simply as a
product of practice in narrative writing.
 R. Ellis et al. / System 36 (2008) 353371 365

It should be noted that the eects of the CF were evident despite the fact that the learn-
ers did not become aware that the purpose of the study was to develop their ability to use
articles accurately [Note 6]. The learners responses to the exit questionnaire demonstrated
that, with only a few exceptions, they perceived the tasks as opportunities to practise their
writing or general English skills. It should also be noted that the learners in this study
wrote entirely new narratives for post-tests 1 and 2 and that the benets of the CF were
clearly evident in these. In short, the results of this study run counter to Truscotts
(1996, 1999) claim that CF does not aect acquisition and only assists redrafting. Finally,
it is worth pointing out that the gains in accuracy occurred in writing that was to play no
role in the grades the students received for the course (i.e. there was no obvious incentive
for the students to become more accurate).
To provide a concrete illustration of this general nding, consider the following narra-
tive extracts from the pre-test, post-test 1 and post-test 2 for one learner from the focused
CF group and one from the unfocused group. In both examples, the learners initially dem-
onstrated poor control over the use of a to express rst mention. They either overused
the or failed to use any article both common errors in these students writing. In
post-test 1 they exhibited much greater control of a. The learner from the focused group
supplied a in two out of the three obligatory occasions in the rst sentence while the lear-
ner from the unfocused group supplied it in all three obligatory occasions. Post-test 2
shows that the increase in control over the use of a was maintained for both learners,
with the learner from the focused group achieving one hundred percent accuracy. These
improvements are representative of the kinds of improvement that occurred overall in
the two experimental groups.
Example (1): Focused group

Pre-test Post-test 1 Post-test 2

One day the dog steel the
bone from the butcher and
run away. When the dog
reached at the middle of
bridge, the dog looked at the
river . . .
One day, a man steal the
handbag from a lady and
run away. The lady shouted
Please anybody catch him!
The man was running away
front of an old man . . .
One day a blind man was
taking walk on the sidewalk.
But there is a big hole and
sign which said Danger. Of
course he cant see the sign
and he was enclosing to the
hole . . .

Example (2): Unfocused group

Pre-test Post-test 1 Post-test 2

One day a dog stole a bone
from butcher. When he
walked on the bridge over
the river he looked at surface
and saw himself with holding
a bone . . .
An old man stoled a
handbag from an old
woman. Soon the man
began to run. The woman
shouted Help! He is a
thief! A old man who was
sitting on a bench . . .
There was a hole on a
sidewalk and was a sign that
announced there is a danger.
One day a blindman walked
the sidewalk. Of course the
man cant see the sign . . .
366 R. Ellis et al. / System 36 (2008) 353371

It is possible of course that the improvement evident in the experimental groups article
usage by Posttest 2 is the product of an avoidance strategy. Truscott (2004) made the
important point that correction may cause learners to avoid constructions on which they
expect to be corrected, thereby reducing the number of errors they make in these construc-
tions. To check whether this was the case, we examined the number of obligatory occasion
for the use of articles performing rst and second mention in the three tests. If the learners
were adopting an avoidance strategy, then there would be a reduction in the number of
obligatory occasions. This, however, was not the case. Table 5 shows the total and mean
obligatory occasions for each of three groups at each testing time. There is an increase for
all three groups from pre-test to post-test 1. There is an increase from post-test 1 to post-
test 2 in the case of the two experimental groups and a decrease in the case of the control
group. Overall, it appears clear that the corrective feedback did not lead to avoidance
behaviour.
The results for the error correction test replicate those for the narrative writing tests.
Both experimental groups improved signicantly from pre-test to post-test and both were
better able to correct the article errors in the sentences than the control group. The two
learners referred to above, for example, improved their scores from zero to four and from
two to eleven respectively. These results suggest that the CF may have helped the learners
to enhance their metalinguistic understanding of the use of articles to express rst mention
and anaphoric reference they would almost certainly have received explicit instruction in
the use of articles at some time during their high school English classes. This enhancement
is noteworthy because the learners were not given any metalinguistic explanation of their
errors. Thus any understanding they developed was induced as a result of the direct
feedback.
Second language acquisition researchers (e.g. Doughty, 2003) might wish to argue that
an error correction test does not provide evidence of acquisition, but only of metalinguistic
understanding. However, we would like to point out that such knowledge is important in
the case of writing which allows for and surely benets from the conscious monitoring that
metalinguistic understanding makes possible. Also, the results for the narrative writing
tests indicate that the CF beneted learners procedural ability to use articles accurately
so it would seem that the CF resulted in more than just explicit knowledge of the relevant
rule. We would argue that the goal of written CF should be to develop both declarative
knowledge and procedural ability and that the results of this study suggest it is able to
do so.
The second research question asked whether the eects of CF diered according to
whether it was focused or unfocused. The results indicate that it did not. There were no
statistically signicant dierences between the focused and unfocused CF groups in either
the narrative writing tests or the error correction test. Both types of CF were equally eec-

Table 5
Obligatory occasions for articles in the three tests
Groups n Pre-test Post-test Delayed post-test
Total Mean Total Mean Total Mean
Focussed 18 235 13.1 255 14.17 270 15.0
Unfocussed 18 215 11.9 249 13.8 257 14.3
Control 13 155 11.9 204 15.7 179 13.8
 R. Ellis et al. / System 36 (2008) 353371 367

tive. There is, however, some evidence to suggest that focused CF may be more eective in
the long run. Whereas the unfocused CF group only maintained their level of accuracy
from post-test 1 to post-test 2, the focused group improved, showing a mean gain of
.07. Furthermore, whereas 8 of the 11 learners in the focused group achieved the.9 crite-
rion level for acquisition by post-test 2, only 3 out of 13 learners in the unfocused group
did so. This dierence may reect the fact that the focussed group received more total cor-
rections than the unfocussed group (i.e. 62 as opposed to 48). Many learners in the unfo-
cused group made only one or two article errors and thus received only minimal correction
of any misuse of articles they committed. However, the fact that the number of corrections
of articles in the focussed group far outweighed corrections of any other single linguistic
feature may explain why the post-test dierences did not reach signicance. It is possible
that the learners in the two groups both became equally aware that the focus of the study
was on articles although the results of the exit questionnaire suggest that neither group did
so. Overall, in retrospect, it might be better to characterize the dierences between the two
types of CF in this study as focused versus less focused rather than focused versus
unfocused.
The question of the extent to which CF needs to be focussed in order to be eective
remains an important one for language pedagogy. Teachers need to consider whether to
focus their correction on a single error at a time or whether they can address a number
of dierent errors. They may feel that they do not have the luxury of focusing exclusively
on a single error when they correct their students written work. Clearly, if CF is eective
when it addresses a number of dierent errors, it would be advantageous to adopt this
approach. This is an issue in need of further research.

7. Conclusion

The study reported in this article has a number of limitations. The sample size was fairly
small, partly as a result of removing those students whose pre-test scores showed that they
had already acquired the use of indenite and denite article for rst and second mention.
A further problem was the control group. Although there was no statistically signicant
dierence between the control and experimental groups pre-test scores, the control group
was notably weaker than the two experimental groups (see Tables 3 and 4). The focused
group also diered from the other groups in a potentially signicant way. As shown in
Table 3, the standard deviation of the pre-test scores for this group was less than half
of that for the unfocused group and only a third for that of the control group. It is possible
that these dierences in the groups pre-test scores aected the comparability of the
groups. These limitations reect the diculty of conducting written corrective feedback
studies of this kind with intact classes. They should be borne in mind when considering
the results of the study and the conclusions below.
In his dismissal of Ferris (1999) apologia for written corrective feedback, Truscott
(1999) wrote the following:
Teachers must constantly make decisions about what to do and what not to do in
their classes. These decisions are necessarily made under conditions of uncertainty:
research never puts an end to doubt. But the choices still must be made, and made
constantly. So given the world as it is, the best we can hope for is that teachers will
look seriously at the case against grammar correction, compare it to the case for cor-
368 R. Ellis et al. / System 36 (2008) 353371

rection, decide which is the stronger, and then incorporate that decision in their
teaching (p. 121).
The case for and against written corrective feedback does not rest entirely on what
research shows about its eectiveness but the research evidence is clearly a major factor
to be considered. Indeed, Truscotts own scepticism regarding the value of written CF is
based largely on what he sees as an absence of empirical evidence demonstrating that it con-
tributes to acquisition as manifested in improvements in grammatical accuracy in subse-
quent writing. However, such evidence is now becoming available. This study indicates
that written CF can be eective in promoting greater grammatical accuracy in both an error
correction test and, importantly, in a subsequent piece of writing. Importantly, it shows
that CF can be eective in an EFL context as well as an in an ESL context [Note 7].
Truscotts response might be that the research to date is very limited. We would agree.
The studies that have produced evidence to suggest written CF helps have all focussed on
English articles. Bitchener et al. (2005) also found an eect on the past simple tense (but
not on prepositions). Clearly, the case for written CF requires evidence showing that it can
aect a wide range of grammatical features, not just one or two. So we need more studies
looking at dierent grammatical features. At the moment, perhaps all we can say is that
CF can assist learners to develop greater control over grammatical features which are ame-
nable to rules of thumb. Truscott may still be partially right written CF may prove to be
ineective against more complex grammatical features.
There is another important point to consider. The bulk of the written CF studies has
examined unfocused correction (i.e. a wide variety of learner errors were corrected).
The studies that have shown written CF to be eective have all been much more narrowly
focussed, addressing the eects of CF directed at specic grammatical features. It remains
a possibility that unfocussed written CF is ineective (or even damaging, as Truscott
(2007) suggests) while narrowly focussed CF is eective. Truscott (1999) himself acknowl-
edged that it might be possible for highly focussed written correction to aect acquisition.
We need to know how focused CF needs to be to enable learners to attend to (and perhaps
also to understand) the corrections. A mass of corrections directed at a diverse set of lin-
guistic phenomena (and perhaps also at content and organisational issues) is hardly likely
to foster the noticing and cognizing that may be needed for CF to work for acquisition. In
contrast, correction directed repeatedly at a very specic grammatical problem may well
have greater eect, as studies of oral CF have shown. The study reported in this article
has attempted to address this issue by comparing written unfocussed and focussed CF
but, as pointed out earlier, this distinction may not have been successfully operationalized.
So there is an obvious need for further research here.

8. Notes

1. Guenette (2007) points out that a confounding variable in previous studies of written
CF is whether or not the students received some kind of incentive (e.g. in the form
of grades) for participating in the experiment.
2. A reviewer of this paper pointed out that the use of obligatory occasion analysis as a
basis for correcting learners errors meant that the students were not required to delete
articles (i.e. only to supply the correct article). This reviewer suggests that one eect of
the correction might have been to signal to learners that they needed to use articles a lot
 R. Ellis et al. / System 36 (2008) 353371 369

and may have led to errors of overuse. However, for the particular functions that we
were investigating (use of a for rst mention and the for second mention) overuse
can only take the form of using one of the articles in contexts that required the other
article and this was addressed by means of the obligatory occasion analysis. It is pos-
sible that the correction led to overuse of articles in contexts that were not the focus
of this study and that did not require the use of an article but this remains an issue
for further study.
3. It is possible, of course, that the students understood writing skills as including gram-
mar. However, it is clear from the exit questionnaire that they did not realise that the
focus of the correction was on a specic grammatical structure.
4. A further ANOVA comparing the two experimental groups combined into a single
group and the control was also carried out. This produced similar results. That is,
the combined experimental group signicantly increased their scores between the pre-
test and post-test 1 and also between the pre-test and post-test 2, whereas the control
group did not. The dierence between the combined experimental group and the con-
trol group on post-test 2 was statistically signicant (t (33) = 3.86, p < .001) but that on
post-test 1 did not reach signicance (t(33) = 1.36, p = .18).
5. Combining the two experimental groups into a single group produced similar results.
There was a signicant dierence between the combined experimental group and the
control group on the post-test (t (33) = 2.91, p < .01.
6. The fact that the students did not perceive the primary purpose of the tasks as devel-
oping a metalinguistic understanding does not preclude the possibility that they devel-
oped this understanding from the feedback they were given. Focusing on form on the
context of a meaning-centred activity can assist the development of both metalingusitic
and procedural knowledge.
7. One of the reviewers of this paper noted that the tasks and tests were quite simple and
at low levels of diculty and that this makes the design of this study quite dierent from
studies of written corrective feedback in ESL contexts, which have typically examined
longer and more complex texts. This is, of course, one reason for examining EFL learn-
ers and learners of a relatively low level of prociency. However, the statement is not
entirely true. The data collected by Sheen (2007) from ESL learners in a community col-
lege in the US are quite comparable with the data collected in this study. What may be
more important than the instructional context is the prociency level of the students.

Appendix. How the Dalmatian got its spots

A Dalmatian is a white dog with a lot of black spots. Once upon a time, however, the
Dalmatian was all white, and she hated it. She always thought that all white was very
boring.
One day she was walking on the sidewalk. A painter standing on a ladder was painting
a wall with black paint. When the Dalmatian walked near the painter, suddenly, a cat and
a dog ran into the ladder. The black paint spilled all over the Dalmatian. Black spots were
everywhere! She loved her new spots! They were perfect. It was just what she wanted.
When the other Dalmatians saw her, they wanted black spots too. So the Dalmatian
bought a can of black paint and spilled paint over them. Now all the Dalmatians have
black spots.
370 R. Ellis et al. / System 36 (2008) 353371

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