Investigating Pakistani Rural and Urban EFL students’ language learning beliefs towards written corrective CF and their impact on written constructive feedback

The effectiveness of different types of feedback to improve learners’ writing accuracy has received much attention in the field of foreign language learning. The current study is the continuation of that focus by probing whether beliefs about written corrective feedback are different between students of two different contexts (urban &
rural) in Pakistan and examining the impact of students’ beliefs on obtaining writing accuracy. By comparing students’ contexts and investigating beliefs about written corrective feedback, this study investigated the topic from cognitive perspective different from the previous studies on cognitive and social perspective. A sample of
163 undergraduate students was selected at Khwaja Fareed University Pakistan. The students were placed into three different feedback groups: direct, indirect and metalinguistic corrective feedback (urban) and two groups: direct and indirect corrective feedback (rural) according to their preferences. 31 students were in the control group. Instruments such as questionnaire, interview and writing prompts were used to collect data. Data were collected over the time in the pre-test, post-test, and two delayed post-tests. Qualitative data were thematically analyzed and results were
compared. Writing accuracy for the post-test and two delayed post-tests was analyzed on SPSS with various repeated measures ANOVA tests. Findings revealed that there were differences in the beliefs of both groups of the students (urban and rural). Types
of the preferred written corrective feedback were also different between urban and rural students. Besides, students’ beliefs about written corrective feedback were found to impact more on rural students’ writing accuracy as compared to urban students.
Experimental group showed significant improvement in the writing accuracy in the post delayed-tests. Control group also showed improvement in the immediate posttest but later no significant development was noted for both post-delayed tests. Besides, the study has theoretical and practical implications for the students’
developmental levels.