Roya Movahed - English department, University of Zabol, Zabol, Iran

The present study aimed at investigating the effect of focused and unfocused written correctivefeedback through a pre-test-immediate post-test-delayed post-test design on 60 male and femalesophomore students majoring in English translation and teaching in University of Zabol whowere randomly divided into two experimental, receiving either focused (N=20; 11females & 9males) or unfocused (N=20; 12 females & 8 males) written corrective feedback, and a controlgroup (N=20) receiving no feedback at all. The focused group received correction of just articleerrors while for the unfocused one the correction of all errors along with articles was provided.Results indicated that the focused group outperformed both unfocused and control groups and so,the overall effectiveness of written corrective feedback and in particular the efficacy of focusedcorrective feedback over unfocused one in improving students’ use of definite/indefinite articlesin writing was verified. Moreover, the comparison of males and females in the focused grouprevealed no significant difference regarding the effect of corrective feedback on their writingaccuracy.

Written corrective feedback, focused/unfocused feedback, English articles, grammatical accuracy, gender