The Effectiveness of Direct and Indirect Feedback on Learners’ Writing Performance across Different Gender and Cultural Background at Higher Education

Abstract

The study investigated whether there is any interaction effect or not among gender, learners’ cultural background and types of feedback factors in the population mean of writing accuracy. The 111 participants were the L2 writing learners of the third semester students of English study program of IAIN Palangka Raya. The participants were clustered into three groups consisting of two experimental classes: the first treatment class treated using Direct Feedback (n=38), the second treatment class treated using Indirect Feedback (n=37),   and one control class did got give feedback (n=36). The data were analyzed using a three way ANOVA. The findings revealed that there was a statistically different effect for the types of feedback (F= 100.857, p= 0.000) and gender (F= 26.688; p=0.000) on the learners’ writing accuracy. However, the learners’ cultural background (F= 0.347; p=0.708) did not give effect on the learners’ writing accuracy. On the contrary, the interaction between:  gender and types of feedback (F=2.793, p= 0.066) gender and cultural background (F=0.183, p= 0.833); cultural background and types of feedback (F=0.314, p= 0.868); and among gender, cultural background and types of feedback (F=0.807, p= 0.524) did not give significant effect on the learners’ writing accuracy. The findings strengthened the knowledge body by giving a recommendation on how different types of feedback could have different purposes.