The relationship between teachers’ feedback and students’ self correction ability of grammar Error in writing: the case of gore preparatory school, southwest Ethiopia

This study tried to examine the relationship between teachers’ feedback and the influence level of its explicitness on students’ self-correction ability in writing at Gore Preparatory School. To find out this, one shot experimental research design using quantitative research method was employed. Data were collected from 60 students who were selected by simple random sampling technique using lottery method. Participants were assigned to one control group and two experimental groups randomly. Data collecting instruments were an in-class writing essay test and correction exercise, and grammar knowledge test. The first drafts and the second drafts of essays, which were written by students, were compared by counting number of errors before feedback and by counting number of corrected errors after feedback. The grammar knowledge test was given to measure students’ grammar knowledge and to examine whether there was an influence on their self-correction ability. The data from writing essays were normalized using the procedure of Ferris et al. (2001) and analyzed using one way ANOVA, Turkey’s post hoc t-test and correlation. The finding of this study indicated that teachers’ feedback had strong effect on students’ self-correction and its level of explicitness had also an influence on students’ self-correction ability. The grammar knowledge did not have an influence on students’ self-correction among the groups. Based on the finding it was suggested that teachers should help the students revise their own drafts and edit their own grammatical errors by providing more explicit error feedback.