| A lot of research has been done to investigate the effectiveness of indirect written corrective feedback (IWCF), with controversy remaining regarding its effect on students’ linguistic accuracy and self-editing skills. Some studies have proved that grammatical correction has substantial effect on writing accuracy (Chandler, 2003; Ferris, 2006; Kang & Han, 2015; Ji, 2015; Kurzer, 2017) but some still question its efficacy especially when students write a new piece of writings and suggested to give additional writing practices instead of corrective feedback (Sheppard, 1992; Truscott, 1996; Bitchener et al., 2005; Truscott & Hsu, 2008; and Pan, 2010; and Beuningen, 2012). Thus, this experimental research tried to tackle the unsettle issues by formulating two research questions (1) Does the inclusion of IWCF in the writing class significantly increase the students’ linguistic accuracy? (2) Do the students who receive IWCF perform better self-editing abilities than those who do not? By using convenience samplings, this study involved 28 third-semester students from Atma Jaya Catholic University that were set into a treatment group (N=14, received feedback on content plus indirect written corrective feedback on grammatical aspects) and a control group (N=14, received feedback on content only). After giving three kinds of writing tests (pretest, post-test, and delayed test) and comparing the errors tally between the two groups 1 and 3 weeks after the delivery of corrective feedback, a t-test with the Cohen’s d test and ANOVA test results showed that the grammatical accuracy of the students who received grammatical error correction was significantly higher than those who only received feedback on content. Besides, t-test and Mann-Whitney test results indicated that the successful editing rate of treatment group was largely higher than the control group. Thus, these findings revealed that the students who went through grammatical revision practices were more capable to self-correct the errors compared to those who did not. These results supported Ji’s (2015) & Kurzer's (2017) studies that reported indirect WCF not only resulted to improved writing accuracy but also established self-editing skill. Additionally, the findings of study opposed Truscott (1996, 1999, and 2007) that repeatedly voiced out the useless of grammatical correction in writing class. |