Colours as a form of corrective feedback in EFL learners’ writing

Abstract

The study aims to explore the effect of colours as a form of corrective feedback in EFL learners’ writing and how the foregrounding of such feedback is related to the learners’ performance in EFL acquisition. Data were collected from a group of EFL learners, in which majority of them came from the Middle East countries. A pre-test and a post-test were conducted to determine the types of grammatical errors that they committed the most. The result of the study revealed that colour corrective feedback was found to be effective in increasing learners’ awareness which had improved learners’ performance in writing. After receiving corrective feedback in the form of colours, it was found that grammatical errors, specifically mechanical and morphological errors committed by the learners had decreased tremendously whereas in terms of semantic errors, the number of errors had increased. This result supports the notion of Noticing Hypothesis whereby learning is effective when the errors are noticed. The use of colours in highlighting specific errors was also found to assist learners to progress further and faster in the learning process as the types of errors committed can immediately be identified. This study enlightens the usage of colour-coded system as a form of indirect corrective feedback for language instructors specifically in EFL context. Thus, the pedagogical implication of this study is that colours could be used as a form of indirect corrective feedback due to its ability to immediately direct students’ focus towards specific grammatical errors.