The effect of elicitation vs. metalinguistic feedback on grammatical accuracy of beginning EFL learners and their perceptions

One of the main areas of research in First Language (L1) and Second Language (L2) studies which has recently attracted a lot of attention is the significance of error analysis/correction and its subsequent effects on language learning. There is a vast amount of research concerning errors and corrective feedback in language learning. What had not yet been studied widely enough and was the focus of this study, however, was what kinds of corrective feedback are more effective with regard to grammatical errors in writings of elementary EFL students. The type of feedback under the investigation was implicit corrective feedback and the two of its sub categories, metalinguistic feedback and elicitation feedback. This quasi-experimental study sought to investigate the relationship between noticing of implicit corrective feedback (CF) and L2 development in relation to learning past tense in grammar and writing. To this end, 32 second language learners from Jihad English Institute of Neyshabour participated in this study. To determine which form of corrective feedbacks had been more effective, the researcher first conducted a pretest to assess the students’ level of accuracy in using simple past tense in their writings. Then, the researcher gave two types of treatments i.e. metalinguistic and elicitation to the students. The results showed that students in elicitation feedback class performed better than the students in metalinguistic feedback class. Therefore, it can be claimed that elicitation feedback improved the grammar of EFL learners more and had a greater positive impact on the students' writing accuracy than metalinguistic feedback.