Abstract

Several researches conducted in recent times have found that students’ achievement in English language in general and essay writing in particular has been very poor. This situation has been linked to a deficiency in the type of essay writing instruction given in Nigerian schools which mostly lacks a feedback component. Two of the strategies that could be adopted in giving appropriate and timely feedback during writing instruction are direct and indirect manageable feedback strategies. Hence, this study was carried out to investigate the effects of the two strategies on secondary school students’ learning outcomes in English essay writing. The study adopted a pretest-posttest control group quasi experimental research design. The stratified random sampling technique was used to select nine secondary schools from Ogun East Senatorial District, Nigeria. Achievement test in essay writing (r= 0.7) and attitude to essay writing questionnaire (r= 0.72) were the two main instruments used for data collection. Findings revealed that treatment had a significant main effect on students’ posttest achievement in essay writing (F(2,307) = 204.46, P<.05). However, treatment had no significant effect on students’ attitude to essay writing (F(2,307) = 1.46, P>.05). There was also a significant interaction effect of treatment and class size on students’ achievement in essay writing (F(4,307)= 4.24, P<.05). Based on these findings, it was recommended that teachers should adopt these strategies for effective and prompt provision of feedback on students’ writings. Government should also ensure that seminars and workshops are organised on regular basis to train teachers on the use of both strategies. Nigerian texbook writers should also focus more on the issue of corrective feedback in language teaching in order to address the dearth of local textbooks on feedback strategies.