the effects of immediate and delayed corrective feedback on the acquisition of english subject-verb agreement by efl learners

The timing of corrective feedback (cf) provision has been a controversial issue in sla research. despite widespread research, there is still disagreement on whether the erroneous structures should be addressed immediately or at a delayed time after task completion. this study investigates the comparative effects of immediate and delayed feedback on developing subject-verb (s-v) agreement by iranian efl learners. to this end, 28 university students were divided into immediate (n=14) and delayed (n=14) cf groups after the administration of the oxford placement test. the study involved a pre-test, three treatment sessions and a post-test. the two feedback groups received treatments followed by either immediate feedback provided after task completion or delayed feedback delivered after 3 days of task completion. the tests and treatments contained various activities including multiple-choice, cloze, fill-in-the-blanks and picture description task. the results of the analysis of test scores on the pre- and post-tests were indicative of the outperformance of the immediate cf group, implying that the immediate feedback may be more beneficial for developing s-v agreement accuracy than delayed feedback. the findings of this investigation can bear efficient implications for language teachers and researchers.