ABSTRACT
Writing has proven to be one of the most challenging skills for many non-native speakers. Many English language learners experience difficulty in organizing their ideas, selecting correct vocabulary and applying grammar rules accurately. Additionally, in higher levels of proficiency and in more advanced writing tasks, style and tone add to the complexity. Writing instructors use different methods and ways to help their student improve and one of these ways is the use of corrective feedback. Various types of feedback including online, written, oral, explicit and implicit feedback are used. Holistic and specialized approaches (Evans, Hartshorn, McCollum and Wolferberger, 2010) are also explored. In the UAE, many Emirati students in universities where English is the medium of instruction find composition courses difficult and writing essays a challenge despite long hours of instruction and practice. Instructors generally provide corrective feedback and students revise their papers. However, in many cases, the final drafts show less than desired improvement. This paper sets out to examine the effectiveness of different types of feedback in the areas of content, organization and accuracy. Furthermore, different learning variables such as peer interaction (Sato and Lyster, 2012) and cultural factors are discussed and possible educational implications are mentioned.
KEYWORDS
accuracy, learning variables, sociocultural factors, unified approach