Corrective Feedback and its Effects on Memoranda and Letters of Students of Sunyani Technical University, Ghana

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to examine the effect of corrective feedback (CF) on the memoranda and business letters of students of Sunyani Technical University, Ghana. In Ghana, this is one area in SLA that has not received a lot of recognition. Noticing Hypothesis was the theoretical underpinning the research adopted. The design of the research was sequential exploratory mixed methods approach. The field data (students' texts and questionnaire items) were collected from selected 60 (sixty) first year students of Sunyani Technical University. The respondents were segmented into three groupings – Direct Feedback (DF), Indirect Feedback (IF), and No Feedback (NF) groups. Each student-participant composed 4 texts in all before questionnaires were administered. In all, a total of 300 sample size was used. This comprises 240 texts and 60 questionnaire items. After a pre-test was conducted, three interventions (DF, IF, and NF) were used on the pre-test texts of the student-respondents before they took the post-tests.  The result of the study showed that CF in general has positive impact on students' texts. The research further revealed that DF and IF interventions correct memorandum and business letter errors better than the NF; but the potency of the DF intervention is stronger than that of the IF. It was recommended that language teachers should use DF intervention in grading the scripts of students.