Does error feedback help student writers? New evidence on the short- and long-term effects of written error correction

Attitudes and approaches toward student error have been a source of debate among second language acquisition (SLA) and second language (L2) writing scholars for more than two decades. The debate has ranged from calls for correction of all student errors to prevent fossilization (e.g., Higgs & Clifford, 1982; Lalande, 1982) to a preference for selective correction that focuses on patterns of error that can be addressed productively (Bates et al., 1993; Ferris, 1995c; Hendrickson, 1978) torecommendations that all error correction be eliminated because it is unnecessary, ineffective and even counterproductive (Cook, 1991; Corder, 1981; Krashen, 1984; Selinker, 1992; Truscott, 1996).