Language Teaching Research Quarterly

The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of explicit corrective feedback (CF) strategies (i.e., metalinguistic feedback and explicit correction) versus implicit CF methods (i.e., recasts and explanation questions) in helping English language learners acquire the that-trace filter. To this end, one hundred twenty intermediate English learners were recruited. Each participant was randomly assigned to one of five groups: control, recast, metalinguistic feedback, explicit correction, and clarification request. The participants were given a written production test (WPT) and a grammaticality judgment test (GJT) as pre- and posttests, respectively. The experimental groups underwent two sessions of treatment that included interactive activities. These activities were designed as information-gap tasks that utilized the that-trace filter. Participants received CF that focused on their wrong answers based on the groups they were assigned to. The posttest results indicated that the experimental groups significantly outperformed the control group. When comparing the experimental groups’ results on receptive and productive tests, however, no statistically significant differences were found. In addition, a semi-structured interview was conducted with 12 individuals. The findings indicate that teachers’ CF has a significant role in enhancing students’ acquisition of L2 complex grammar structures.