Contextualizing corrective feedback in second language writing pedagogy

Although effective writing skills are vital to the success of university-level students, second language (L2) writers face unique challenges in developing these skills. This is particularly relevant to their ability to produce writing that is linguistically accurate. While many writing teachers feel a great commitment to these students, much of the research has either led to conflicting results or provided teachers with limited practical guidelines that can be utilized effectively in the classroom. This is especially true regarding written corrective feedback (WCF). Therefore, this article provides L2 writing teachers with a paradigm for understanding the WCF debate and interpreting the available research. We emphasize three contextual variables that must be considered if we are to understand the current research and maximize the utility of future research. These include the learner, the situation, and the instructional methodology. As an examination of how one of these contextual variables might affect L2 writing accuracy, this article presents an innovative instructional methodology specifically designed to improve L2 writing accuracy. We refer to the central component of this methodology as dynamic written corrective feedback. The article concludes with the preliminary results from an exploratory pilot study using this instructional methodology.