ABSTRACT
The current study focuses on one kind of feedback—indirect written corrective feedback—to examine whether learners at two proficiency levels show different self-correction patterns and to further explore learners’ depth of processing as they self-correct their errors. Twenty-four Korean learners received unfocused feedback on their essays and were asked to think aloud while self-correcting their errors that had been underlined. The self-correction results revealed that regardless of proficiency level, the learners were able to accurately correct more than one-third of their errors. The think-aloud results showed that the majority of underlined errors were processed either at the highest or the lowest level of processing. The findings suggest that successful self-correction was most likely a result of the learners’ quick and efficient activation of their prior knowledge, which required minimum effort from them. The findings are discussed with pedagogical implications.
