Written corrective feedback for L2 development

Picture a learner's essay returned with marks on the errors: that mark is what researchers call written corrective feedback. This book asks a practical question: can such feedback actually help second language learners grow their skills over an extended period? To answer it, the author weighs cognitive and sociocultural accounts of learning and surveys the existing empirical studies on how far written feedback has been shown to aid L2 development.

The chapters go beyond asking whether feedback works at all. They look at the cognitive processing conditions that shape its effects, along with contextual factors and individual learner characteristics that have been proposed, and in some studies found, to either strengthen or weaken its impact.