The Effect of Focused VS. Unfocused Written Teacher Correction on Grammatical Accuracy of Iranian Medical Students

The present study was an attempt to investigate the effect of focused vs. unfocused written teacher correction on grammatical accuracy of Iranian medical students. Medical science students in the Iranian universities study three 2-credit EMS courses irrespective of their background in English before entering the university, but they seem to be weak in terms of grammatical accuracy in all their second language skills. To do the study, a quasi-experimental research was designed in which 120 homogeneous male and female learners studying medicine and related majors in Qeshm Medical Science University were selected following their performance in a piloted version of language proficiency test of PET. The participants were divided into three almost equal groups shaping the experimental group A (Focused Written Teacher Correction) (FWTC), the experimental Group B (Unfocused Written Teacher Correction) (UFWTC), and the control group (C) for the purpose of the study. The participants received a validated researcher-made pretest of grammar prior to the treatment and then each group received its specific training for 13 weeks. Following the treatment, the learners received a validated posttest of grammar and the data gathered was analyzed via SPSS version 21. The results revealed that both types of teacher correction positively affected grammatical accuracy of the learners, however, the learners in FWTC group showed more significant improvement in their grammatical accuracy when compared with the learners in UFWTC group and the control group. The present findings signify the importance of paying attention to FWTC in the ESP and EMS courses and can shed lights on the dark sides of teaching applied grammar to the EFL learners to help them produce grammatically accurate utterances.