Incorporating Oral Corrective Feedback into the Business English Writing Class

This study investigated the feasibility and effectiveness of incorporating oral corrective feedback into the content-based business English writing class. Two types of oral corrective feedback, recasts and metalinguistic feedback, were integrated into business English writing classes to help low intermediate-proficiency Korean university students improve the ability to use the simple past, present progressive, and present perfect tenses correctly in their written production. Prior to the treatments, the subjects had basic grammatical knowledge of the target verb tenses, but they had only limited control over them in their written production. Three groups were formed: recast group that received corrective recasting, metalinguistic group that received metalinguistic clues, and control group that received no oral corrective feedback. The study demonstrated that it was feasible to incorporate recasts and metalinguistic feedback into content-based business English writing classes and that metalinguistic feedback had greater and more endurable effects than recasts on promoting the correct use of the target verb tenses in written production. It can be concluded that oral corrective feedback, metalinguistic feedback in particular, can be used in the business English writing classroom to help students gain greater control over already partially acquired forms and therefore improve their writing accuracy.