an analysis of differential impacts of focused/unfocused written corrective feedback on learning transfer in students of medical sciences

Background: currently, writing is acknowledged as an essential skill university students need to develop to analyze and produce academic texts in different content areas.prompted by the dearth of research on writing errors in english for the students of medical sciences and the importance of learning transfer, this study explored how the incorporation of different types of indirect corrective feedback in a general medical course of english can facilitate academic writing practices in later technical settings.to this aim, this comparative study was undertaken with two groups of low-proficient iranian students of medical sciences who received differing written corrective feedbacks (wcf) treatments on their weekly writing practices over a whole university semester. a control group was also included to establish a baseline for better comparison. overall, the analyses indicated the three groups significantly improved their paragraph writing skills from pre-test to post-test sessions. nevertheless, concerning the multiple comparisons of the posttest and delayed posttest sessions, the tukey post hoc test revealed the p-value was statistically significant only for the focused experimental group (p = 0.011). qualitative analyses of data also specified how the three groups varied in observing presentation accuracy, content, thinking, and assignment-specific criteria. concerning the way the marked errors were resolved, the two experimental groups depicted some diverse patterns. the analysis of results implied that analytical thinking and focus on content and style were promoted throughout the regular process of receiving corrective feedback. however, the focused wcf exceeded the unfocused wcf group in more accurately resolving errors.